Kenya Airways; truly The Pride of Africa

Entitled to be ‘The Pride of Africa’, the Kenyan flag carrier has proven to be one. The airline is one of the best to have emerged from this continent and is known to flyers all around the world. Kenya Airways has been immensely successful ever since its formation and has run as an independent airline, representing Kenya all around the world. Considering the African continent and its aviation scenario, the national airline of Kenya has been oft mentioned as one of the finest carriers. In addition to being a popular African airline, it is also a member of the world’s second largest airline alliance, SKYTEAM which is based at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol and was formed by Air France, Delta Air Lines, Aeroméxico and Korean Air. rnToday, Kenya Airways is functioning as a privatized airline company and was the first African aviation setup to have successful gone through this process. Despite having been privatized and being shared by a number of stakeholders, the airline is still partly shared by the Kenyan government and this forms the second largest share of the company behind KLM, the flag carrier of the Netherlands. Other shareholders in the Kenyan flag carrier include Nairobi Stock Exchange, Ugandan Securities Exchange and Dar-es-Salam Stock Exchange. The Tanzanian carrier, Precision Air is a subsidiary of this airline and is owned 49% by it. The world renowned Kenyan carrier flies to over 50 cities all across Asia, Africa and Europe and is popular not only amongst the sophisticated African travelers but also amongst European travelers flying to Africa Kenya Airways Its European destinations include Athens, Bristol, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Istanbul, London, Paris, Rome, Stockholm and Zurich. In Asia, the airline services the airports of Bangkok, Dubai, Guangzhou, Karachi, Mumbai and Muscat. Inside Africa, the airline services many cities with some of the more popularly traveled ones being Cairo, Johannesburg, Port Louis, Mahe, Lusaka, Luanda, Libreville, Brazzaville, Kinshasa, Juba, Harare, Gaborone, Dar-es-Salam, Djibouti, Antananarivo, Accra, Blantyre, Abidjan, Addis Ababa, Bamako, Cotonou, Douala, Lilongwe, Lagos, Ouagadougou and Zanzibar. rnKenya Airways has code share agreements with numerous African carriers such as Air Botswana, Air Mauritius, TAAG Angola Airlines and LAM Mozambique Airlines and European carriers such as KLM, Air France and the Russian carrier, Aeroflot. From Asia, the Mumbai based Jet Airways and the Korean carrier; Korean Airways are two of the alliances of Kenyan flag carrier. Having come a long way since its inception in 1977 and developed rapidly, the airline has truly proven that it is indeed, ’The Pride of Africa’. At a glance, this may sound like nothing but a caption which the owners found good enough to impress people but on realizing the success story of the airline and seeing its growth from a new emergence in 1977 to one o the world’s finest carriers today, one would surely take it as a description for it.Kenya’s flag carrier has won several acclaims and awards and has remained the ‘African Airline of the Year’ seven times. This shows that the airline is truly one of the best, not only in Africa but elsewhere too and with little enhancement, can be a strong competition for the current leaders in the aviation industry.