■ KENYA: Kenya Airways releases its Operations Report for Q1 FY2012.

Kenya Airways (KQ) today released its Operations Report for the First Quarter of its 2012 Financial Year. For the layman, it is essentially a run down of how many seats are being offered on a particular route i.e capacity, and how well their product (i.e seats) are selling.

Overall no huge changes on last years numbers, but better utilization of available aircraft, in addition to better route planning/augmentation and cancellation, allowed Kenya Airways to offer more seats to its emerging critical markets (Asia & the Middle East as opposed to Europe) though that did not necessarily translate into more bums on seats as the Seat Occupancy run down will show.

A Kenya Airways Boeing 737-800

Capacity Available: % Change on 2011

The measure of an airline flight's passenger carrying capacity against the same period in 2011.

• Middle East & Far East (+15%): Growth here was largely due to the introduction of direct flights to Delhi and Jeddah and the deployment of the larger Boeing 777 on the Bangkok-Guangzhou and Bangkok-Hong-Kong routes as opposed to the Boeing 767 used last year.
• North Africa (+21.2%): Growth here was spurred on by the introduction of double dailies to Juba in Southern Sudan on the Embraer aircraft and increased frequency to Djibouti via Addis Ababa. There was also an equipment mix using the larger B737 and Embraer E190 as demand dictated.
• East Africa (0%): No real change on 2011's figures was recorded. However, the Seychelles and Dar-es-salaam routes grew by 25% on 2011. This was mostly due to increased deployment of larger aircraft.
• Southern Africa (+1.3%) Marginal growth recorded, though the Luanda and Nampula, Mozambique routes both registered the highest growth.
• West Africa (+6.7%): Growth came mainly from mainly from the new circular routes linking Lagos and Accra, Ouagadougou and Dakar and Cotonou and Bamako.
• Europe (-18.8%): The ongoing EuroZone crisis continues to take its toll. Additionally, capacity rationalization (i.e flying of smaller aircraft) and the suspension of the Rome flight lead to lower capacity.
• Kenya (Domestic) (-5.0%): The drop was as a result of aircraft downgrades on the Nairobi - Mombasa route with the the smaller Embraer E190 replacing the larger B737. However, Kisumu registered a 33.6% growth in capacity due to increased frequencies at peaktimes along with the use of the larger Embraer E190 as opposed to the Embraer E170 used last year.
• Cargo Capacity  (-7.6%): Exports from Kenya dropped on account of unfavourable weather patterns in April and market capacity. Volumes from Europe shrunk reflecting the volatile economic conditions still prevalent in the EuroZone.

 

Seat Occupancy: % Occupancy for 2012 (% Change compared to 2011)

Essentially, the fullness of your aircraft cabin on all flights on a particular route over the same quarter in 2011.

• Middle East & Far East: 68.1% (-10.2%)
• Africa: 62.5% (-1.6%)
• Europe: 66.8% (+1.6%) N.B Passenger uplift to Europe was 89,852 - a reduction on last year’s level of 108,835 following the 18.8% capacity reduction mentioned above. This resulted in a 66.8% Seat Occupancy Level that was marginally better than last year’s level of 65.2%.
• Kenya (Domestic): 73.2% (+1.3%) 

Source [Kenya Airways]

To sum up, the Eurozone crisis continues to affect not only Europe, but also the rest of the world with a number of African carriers feeling the effects of losing what was once upon a time, a very reliable market base. 

But, as any decent business man will tell you, one cannot place one's eggs all in one basket.