KQ announces schedule changes

Kenya Airways (KQ) has announced changes to its summer schedule. Key highlights include suspension of flights to Muscat and Rome, effective immediately until further notice due to capacity optimisation across the network.

The airline has introduced a new direct flight to Dubai that will operate three times a week, with late evening departures from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport to capture the late connecting traffic arriving into Nairobi. This is in addition to the airline’s daily Dubai service.

In West/Central Africa the airline has now combined all Lagos daytime flights to Accra as KQ 534, operating Nairobi-Lagos-Accra-Nairobi. As a result, Kenya Airways will be flying to Accra 12 times a week and nine times a week to Lagos.  The carrier has also increased frequencies to Ndjamena to three non-stop flights a week. Flights to Dakar will now connect through Ouagadougou, increasing flights to OUA to three a week. Bamako flights will operate via Cotonou three times a week, a move that this is expected to ease payload issues that Bamako passengers have experienced in the past.

To Mumbai, KQ has increased from daily to 10 flights a week, with three flights a week to Delhi. The Middle East region will benefit from the extra frequency added on the Jeddah flights to three times weekly, effective July.

On the domestic market, passengers to Kisumu have more travel options with the introduction of an extra frequency over weekends to four times daily. On specific weekdays the airline will maintain its three flights daily.

Effective July, flights to London Heathrow will increase to 10 a week on the 322-seat Boeing 777-200, to handle traffic demand during the Olympics. Paris will get six flights a week during the July-August peak period and the daily Amsterdam capacity will be upgraded to a Boeing 777-200.

New destinations being launched between July and October include Kilimanjaro (Tanzania), Eldoret (Kenya), Abuja (Nigeria) and Beirut (Lebanon).

The optimised schedule comes as the airline moves to increase frequencies on existing routes to meet changing and growing demand while opening new routes in Africa and the Middle East.