UK carrier Virgin Atlantic Airways announced at the end of last week that it will suspend its flights between London and the Kenyan capital Nairobi. The airline only launched flights on the route between London Heathrow and Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in the African city in June 2007.
Virgin Atlantic has found it incredibly difficult to compete with British Airways (BA) and Kenya Airways on the route and has pushed the airline to close the five times weekly route from September 26, 2012. Although it had managed to carve out a notable share of the estimated 310,000 plus O&D passengers that fly on the route every year, it was unable to secure the yield to make the route successful with average fares around half the price being offered by BA.
“We have taken the difficult decision to withdraw our services between Nairobi and London. Despite the best efforts of our employees, external factors including the high price of fuel, increasing aviation taxes in the UK and insufficient passenger numbers throughout the past five years have contributed to the decision,” said Julie Southern, Chief Commercial Officer, Virgin Atlantic.
According to local reports, it took the carrier several years to recover leisure and business passenger numbers following the post-election unrest in 2008, particularly given the on-going European economic downturn. Recent events in the country, particularly a number of civil unrest issues and growing piracy along the coast have resulted in a further slump in demand. “These are still challenging times for the airline industry and we have to deploy our aircraft to routes with the right level of demand to be financially viable,” added Julie Southern.
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