Kenya Airways strengthens relations with Air France-KLM

Kenya Airways has expanded its joint venture with Air France KLM within East Africa. This new deal will allow KLM and Kenya Airways to jointly implement further commercial synergies, optimize networks and schedules to better jointly serve these markets.

The expanded cooperation will be effective from January 1, 2014, and the two carriers will add four new routes to the present arrangement, increasing the total KLM – Kenya Airways joint venture flights to six routes.

From next year, the four new routes will be London – Nairobi, Amsterdam –Entebbe/Kigali, Amsterdam – Lusaka and Harare and the Amsterdam-Kilimanjaro/Dar-es-Salam routes, the latter subject to pending regulatory approval. This will bring the total number of frequencies operated jointly by Kenya Airways and Air France KLM to approximately 44 weekly flights with combined revenues exceeding US$500 million.

Kenya Airways’ Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Titus Naikuni on the occasion of signing the new deal said: “I am proud of the longstanding and successful partnership between KLM and Kenya Airways, both as shareholders, and also business partners. We saw a tremendous development of our route network particularly in the early years of the Joint Venture by focusing our attention through only limited hubs in Europe, allowing our expansion in Africa. This next phase consolidates our capability to serve our guests across the region and into Europe and beyond.”

In his response did KLM’s Chief Operating Officer, Pieter Elbers, who signed the agreement for Air France KLM added: “We are proud of this next milestone in our cooperation with our long time strategic partner Kenya Airways. This long anticipated expansion of the joint venture will enable us to take our cooperation to a new level. Furthermore this new step will provide our passengers with a more extensive network in this important part of the world.”