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Emirates airline based in Nairobi and Dubai has been affected by diplomatic tiff between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kenya as the Transport Ministry opposes Civil Aviation of Dubai request to add additional daily frequencies.
Appearing before members of the Senate committee on Roads and Transportation, Transport Cabinet Secretary James Macharia claimed that Emirates does 14 weekly flights to Nairobi and seeking additional daily frequencies is a request that Kenya is opposed to because of the skewed advantage in favour of airlines from the Gulf region.
“When you add Etihad Airlines and Air Arabia, in total they have 28 weekly flight frequencies against Kenya Airways’ seven and they are designated to fly from the UAE—currently have a combined weekly seat capacity of 15,400 against Kenya Airways’ 5,510,” he said.
According to Macharia, giving Emirates more flight capacity means they will get 90 per cent of business between Nairobi and Dubai while KQ gets 10 per cent arguing that it is not tenable.
Macharia also claimed that the airline and the director-general of the aviation authority in Dubai had written to him “very offending” letters in a bid to arm-twist Kenya into allowing more flight frequencies by the Emirati carrier.
He argued that the aviation told them not to fly aircraft that has capacity of more than 220 seats to Dubai but they fly into Kenya aircraft with more than 400 seats.
“When we receive this kind of letters, they send a wrong message in terms of tactics the airline is using and shows that they do not respect Kenya,” the CS added.
According to Macharia, the government had a special interest in KQ by virtue of a Sh75 billion loan guarantee to the airline and would protect it from any threats on its survival.
The CS said the government’s decision is also informed by the number of passengers which went down as a result of Covid-19 pandemic.
He said Emirates Airlines benefits from substantial government subsidy and is, therefore, capable of selling out the seats in Nairobi-Dubai route at throw-away prices due to the subsidy.
He said only the national career, KQ, can protect Kenya’s national interests in terms of emergencies.
“When Covid-19 struck, we looked for airlines to evacuate our people but only KQ came in handy. We had to change configuration of two KQ planes 747 to help us ship in vaccines because no airline wanted to help us,” Macharia said.
He said KQ, as Kenya Airways is known by its international code, is a corporate entity that impacts heavily on the country’s economy particularly in tourism and movement of horticultural products including flowers. “When it comes to protection, we can’t hesitate to protect KQ,” he said.
In 2010 Kenyan immigration officials deported four members of Dubai’s royal family bringing about a feud between the two countries.
The four royals were detained for lacking proper entry visas in Mombasa, interrogated for hours before being returned to Dubai amid claims that they were terror suspects.
Dubai retaliated by imposing restrictions requiring all Kenyans entering the UAE to present proof of higher education in order to obtain a visa.
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