Kenya Airways ranked Africa’s second most efficient airline
PERFORMANCE: Kenya Airways has been ranked as Africa’s second most efficient airline in a global on-time performance review of airlines and airports.
The latest On-Time Performance Review report by aviation analytics company Cirium reveals that the airline attained an impressive 71.86 per cent on-time arrival rate out of 41,905 completed flights in 2023.
South Africa’s Safair secured the top spot in Africa, while Oman Air emerged as the overall winner in the Middle East & Africa region.
The rankings are based on the percentage of on-time arrivals, defined as flights arriving within 15 minutes of the scheduled gate arrival. Allan Kilavuka CEO Kenya Airways said the high rankings result from Kenya Airways’ persistent focus and delivery of on-time performance each month of the year, which has been a cornerstone of improving guest experience strategy.
“This is a testament to our commitment to improving our on-time performance and our dedication to implementing real improvements on board,” he added.
Kenya Airways holds the 10th position in the overall Middle East & Africa region rankings.
According to Cirium CEO Jeremy Bowen, the data is collected from over 600 sources, allowing the industry stakeholders a third-party perspective on their operational performance. “The programme aims to provide the airline industry and its stakeholders with a neutral, third-party perspective on operational performance for individual airlines.”
International airlines
Cirium’s On-Time Performance programme, which monitors global airline operational performance, utilises data from various sources, providing a neutral, third-party perspective. The programme analyses over 30 million flights annually.
Like many international airlines, Kenya Airways operates a hub and spoke model. Nairobi is the hub while the other destinations it flies to are the spokes. For every commercial passenger carrier, direct flights from hub to spoke and vice versa tend to come at a premium.
Any flight coming from a spoke and transiting through the hub tends to be cheaper. That’s why a direct flight from Istanbul to Nairobi on Turkish Airlines is twice the cost of one transiting through Dubai on Emirates or Doha on Qatar.
Cirum gave the global accolade for the most on-time airline to Avianca Airlines in Bogota, Colombia. Delta Air Lines excelled in North America while Iberia Express led in Europe.
