Kenya Airways adds 4th flight to Gaborone-Nairobi route

GOTHATAONE MOENG
Staff Writer | Tuesday August 16, 2011 00:00

 

The airline now flies four times a week between the two cities.  It previously flew the route three times a week.

The Station Manager for Kenya Airways Botswana, Juliet Zintambila, formally launched the additional flight last Friday.  The flight started operating on August 5.  In a press statement, the CEO of Kenya Airways, Dr Titus Naikuni, said the additional flight was expected to cater for a surge in trader traffic, and to give the airline an edge in attracting traders from Africa, as well as their excess baggage.

This increase in flight frequency will allow the airline's customers to take advantage of its growing route network via its Jomo Kenyatta International Airport hub.  Kenya Airways started flying to Botswana two years ago.  All its flights are code-shared with Air Botswana, meaning that some of the seats on the flights are sold as Air Botswana seats.  In addition to Gaborone, the airline flies to eight other cities within the southern African region.

Naikuni said increasing demand for air travel on the continent had illustrated to the airline that Africa was 'the new growth frontier'.

Because of this, the airline aimed to fly to all African capitals by 2013. It  recently added N'Djamena (Chad) and Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) to its list of destinations. 

Planned new destinations include Kilimanjaro (Tanzania), Abuja (Nigeria) and Port Louis (Mauritius).