Kenya’s national carrier Kenya Airways has been recording losses with the later being a pretax loss of Ksh.8.56 billion in its 2019 half year earnings to June 30.
According to Business Daily, in a bid to boost its financial position, the carrier plans on selling six Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner planes, one Boeing B777-300 and a spare GE engine.
In partnership with Air Partner, KQ also plans to lease back the aircraft.
“Kenya Airways is conducting a series of sale and leaseback transactions covering 6 x B787-8, B777-300 and GEnx spare engine,” read a contract document.
The East African further reports that the carrier has 777s leased out to Turkish Airlines, a plan that is supposedly losing it money.Kenya Airways is losing a lot of money on these leases.
But Kahawa Tungu understands that the carrier has in its midst a faulty aircraft that has had issues dating back to 2016.
The KQ Embraer ERJ-190, registration 5Y-KYT, on September 25, 2016, destined for Nairobi from Entebbe is reported to have burst all its tyres while landing.
It was disabled on the runway.
Again on June 18, 2019, the same aircraft while leaving Mombasa for Nairobi had its right hand engine shut down.
On board were 95 passengers and 3 crew members when the incident happened. The flight headed back to Mombasa for safe landing, 25 minutes after departure.
The airline reported that the captain received a false warning of a mechanical issue on board due to the malfunction of the warning system.
A passenger is however said to have reported that the captain announced a problem with the right hand engine.
The flight was cancelled.
On October 4, 2019, a flight KQ484 enroute Dar es Salaam from Nairobi was forced to make an emergency return to Nairobi 33 minutes after take off.
This was due to an engine failure experience over Tsavo.
In June, KQ had plans to double its fleet in the next five years. This was supposed to help counter competition from Ethiopian Airlines which has over 100 aircraft.
The airline may face tougher times as the chief executive Sebastian Mikosz, plans on leaving effective December 1.
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