This archive report was first published on 11 September 2019.
Published on September 11, 2019, Kenya Airways pilots yesterday demanded a detailed plan for the nationalisation of the airline as a precondition for supporting it.
Kenya Airlines Pilots Association (Kalpa) General Secretary Murithi Nyagah said while the idea of nationalisation is good, it is bound to fail if the airline's mismanagement woes are not addressed first.
The pilots tore into the management, saying that even if they 'flew for free', the airline would still make losses.
"For now the idea is good (nationalisation); we support it, but we need more details. The only time we can endorse it 100 per cent is once we sit down as stakeholders and understand the details," Mr Nyagah said at a press briefing in Nairobi.
The pilots also demanded to know if issues such as political appointees to the board would end if the airline is nationalised.
Kenya Airways saw its losses for the first six months of this year more than double to Sh8.56 billion, sinking it deeper into the red.
Mr Nyagah further said the pilots had saved the airline Sh37.7 billion from potential flight cancellations in the last eight months and urged the management to stop using pilots as a scapegoat for the airline's financial woes.
He said KQ owed pilots an accumulated backlog of 40,000 annual leave days.
Mr Murithi said that over 140 pilots had left KQ in the last three years due to a 'hostile working environment within the airline', which further created a pilot shortage.
He said 414 pilots have been operating a schedule that requires about 600 pilots.
