The launch of JamboJet, Kenya Airways' (KQ) planned Low Cost Carrier wing, has been pushed back to "sometime later this year", Kenya Airways CEO, Titus Naikuni has said.
With a possible launch date of Q1 this year having been put forward last year by Kenya Airways' (KQ) Communications manager, Chris Karanja, in an interview with Ugandan paper, The Monitor, it appears plans to launch JamboJet have now been delayed until "later this year", as a failure to hit a fundraising target forced the Kenyan national carrier to revise an expansion plan.The carrier tore up its first business plan for JamboJet after deciding it needed more time to learn how to run a budget airline, Chief Executive Officer Titus Naikuni said in an interview last week. A revised version is now almost ready and will soon be voted on by the board.
“If the board approves, we see ourselves getting started sometime this year” on JamboJet, Naikuni said at the airline’s headquarters in Nairobi.
Source [Bloomberg]
Awarded its Air Services Licence by the Kenyan Civil Aviation Authority back in October 2012, JamboJet was originally intended to take over its parent's short-haul domestic and regional flights, leaving Kenya Airways to focus on growing its connections between Africa and international markets.
It is understood that JamboJet's previous game plan has now been rejected in
favour of giving the Kenya Airways' board more time to understand the
intricacies of running an LCC, given the failure of its original LCC, Flamingo Airlines - which fizzled out when the subsidiary was quietly absorbed into KQ.
