Kenya Airways to make North American debut mid-4Q18
Kenya Airways (KQ, Nairobi Jomo Kenyatta) has announced it will make its North American debut during the last quarter of this year.
The Kenyan carrier said daily non-stop flights between Nairobi Jomo Kenyatta and New York JFK would start from October 28, 2018. Operations are on-board B787-8 equipment.
“This is an exciting moment for us,” Kenya Airways Group Managing Director and CEO Sebastian Mikosz said in a statement. "It fits within our strategy to attract corporate and high-end tourism traffic from the world to Kenya and Africa."
Airline chairman Michael Joseph told The Nation newspaper that once an equity purchase transaction involving transatlantic operators Delta Air Lines, Virgin Atlantic, and Air France-KLM Royal Dutch Airlines (which owns a stake in Kenya Airways) is completed, Kenya Airways may add another service to the United States albeit with a stop-over in West Africa. Such a service would mirror rival Ethiopian Airlines (ET, Addis Ababa) which already runs a 5x weekly service to Newark from Addis Ababa via its West African hub in Lomé, Togo.
