Kenya Airways to Resume Direct Flights to the US After 8-Month Break

Kenya Airways (KQ) is this weekend scheduled to resume direct flights to the US after an eight-month hiatus accessioned by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The national carrier had initially planned to relaunch the New York nonstop flights on October 31st but the resumption date was pushed to November 29th after a massive cancelation of bookings. 

“We regret to announce that due to increased cancellations of flight bookings to New York City, we have pushed back the resumption of our service to this destination to 29th November,” KQ said in a statement. 

The airline had announced it would initially operate two weekly flights on Wednesdays and Sundays on the Nairobi-New York route before increasing the frequency to three times a week in November (Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday).

KQ suspended all operations in March after the government closed the country’s airspace in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak in Kenya and other parts of the world.

After Kenya reopened its airspace for international flights on August 1st, KQ reduced its routes by half to 27, dropping nonstop flights to the US due to low demand.

KQ launched direct flights to the US in October 2018, cutting the journey to 15 hours. The airline completed 594 trips to and from New York, flying at least 105,084 passengers as of October last year.