Kenya Airways (KQ) has expanded its fleet with a newly leased Boeing 737-800 aircraft amid plans to increase its passenger service routes both within Africa and overseas.
The 737-800 is a narrow-body, short to medium-haul commercial aircraft developed by US plane manufacturer, Boeing.
KQ Chief Executive Officer Allan Kilavuka said that the plane lease is part of a fleet strategy in which the airline is swapping the low-capacity Embraer E-Jets for larger narrow-body aircraft such as the Boeing 737-800 which raises the passenger capacity from 92 to over 160 seats.
The KQ Embraer E-190 aircraft fly in a two-class configuration with 12 business class recliner seats and 84 standard economy class seats. A Boeing 737-800 is designed to carry 162 or 189 passengers based on the class layout.
"The addition of this B737-800 marks a pivotal moment in our fleet expansion journey. It will increase our seat capacity and is a demonstration of our ability to adapt and grow in a challenging operating environment, even as the global aviation industry faces challenges in aircraft availability,” the KQ boss said.
The Boeing 737-800 aircraft has been acquired through a lease deal from Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE) and has a capacity of 170 seats.
"The 737 is a mature aircraft. We have the training facility, the crew, and the engineers to support it. So it is the right aircraft for us to induct at this stage. An airline with less than 50 aircraft is subscale. We need to spread our costs across a larger fleet to achieve sustainability," said Mr Kilavuka.
Mr Kilavuka added that the airline targets to add more than 50 aircraft to its fleet over the next five years.
The official said that KQ’s targeted fleet expansion will be gradual and extend beyond passenger services by considering aircraft with larger belly space that would grow its freight segment from 10 percent to 20 percent of its overall business over the next five years.“One of the things is cargo today is playing below its capacity because cargo is about 10 percent of the business. We want to grow that probably to 20 percent of the business over the next five years. The only way to do that is because we are increasing capacity in the passenger business, we also have to increase capacity in the cargo business”.
Mr Kilavuka said that KQ is also exploring leases of dedicated cargo aircraft, with plans to introduce two Boeing 767 freighters and potentially 777-200 freighters.
