Jomo Kenyatta International Airport Runway Repairs Delays Flights

Jomo Kenyatta International Airport Runway Repairs Delays Flights

The stark reality of past failures to look and plan ahead in good time has once again come home to roost for the Kenya Airports Authority and all the airlines operating from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport last night, when due to urgent repairs and maintenance of runway and taxiway lighting, a significant number of flights were delayed. The aviation fraternity has for long demanded that East Africa’s most important airport requires a second runway so that traffic can continue to arrive and depart in case of an incident on one runway.

Jomo Kenyatta International Airport

A regular aviation source from Nairobi said: ‘They told us in advance to reschedule flights during the closure. It seems wiring needed replacement or had to be maintained but with a second runway we would not have had a total closure of Nairobi. We have been telling that to KAA for years but their top ranks just prance about trying to be important. They should be relevant – if they had had the competence to understand issues, we would have a second runway by now and the expansion of the airport would have been finished a year ago. Government should stop putting politicians into such places and employ professionals’.

It was confirmed that a NOTAM, aka notice to airmen, had been issued in advance allowing airlines both inbound and outbound to delay arrivals and departures, though at a cost of annoying passengers and having some of them miss their connecting flights and needing rebooking by their airlines to reach their final destinations.

KAA has announced that a second runway would be constructed but the completion of this crucial piece of new infrastructure may well still take several years. Watch this space for regular updates from the Eastern African aviation scene. 

Source
Email Us at FlightAfricablog@gmail.com

Another Power Outage hits JKIA-Airlines Demand Action/Resignations

Another Power Outage hits JKIA-Airlines Demand Action/Resignations

Earlier this morning was East Africa’s most important aviation gateway, the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, again hit by a power outage, delaying incoming and outgoing flights.
Kenya Airways just moments ago tweeted their return to normal operations to their thousands of followers on Twitter, and also announced the same on their Facebook page, to reach as many as possible – notably with an apology while the Kenya Airport Authority, responsible for the repeated mess, remains shtumm as usual.

Said one regular source from JIKA to this correspondent when passing the information: ‘These people at KAA have no idea how to run an airport. Only recently a water boiler exploded. This is probably the fourth or fifth outage with major consequences for safety and huge cost for us air operators.
It is time someone responsible is getting fired now or some of these clowns resign because they simply cannot deliver. As long as politics are involved in aviation, like the past CEO Muhoho who is related to high up, there can never be professionalism. They should all be put on a one way flight to Antarctica or some place isolated and never come back to JKIA.’

The damage done to airlines this year alone through power failures without back up immediately coming on line has not been formally quantified but is thought to have run into the combined millions of dollars.

Time to wake up KAA and face reality and DEAL with such issues once and for all, before something major happens when the light go out at night as a plane is about to touch down!

Article Source

Jomo Kenyatta International Airport Power Failure: Sack them all, and do it Now!

Jomo Kenyatta International Airport Power Failure: Sack them all, and do it Now!

SACK THEM, ALL OF THEM, AND DO IT NOW
A second major power failure hit Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport last night, again forcing airlines to divert flights to other airports in Kenya and the region, while awaiting power to be restored.

Only two days earlier did the same happen in the early morning hours, when national airline Kenya Airways is ordinarily processing thousands of connecting passengers from regional destinations flying via Nairobi. Over a dozen flights had to be diverted, at airlines’ expense to such places like Mombasa, Entebbe and even beyond, costing hundreds of thousands of US Dollars the Kenya Airport Authority is now expected to compensate for.

Comments from airline personnel on Sunday were acid, but nothing compared to the lastest tsunami of invectives coming the direction of this correspondent, when in touch late last night with personnel based at JKIA. The management of Kenya Airports Authority was predictably shtumm on this second major outage lasting several hours during the evening peak period, prompting calls for the authority’s ‘Damaging’ Director as one outspoken regular source said, to be sacked together with others responsible for these regular outages. ‘We are faced with a lot of cost and will probably go to court with KAA for compensation. This is gross misconduct and they are not taking their duties and us seriously. We are the reason, we airlines are the reason they exist, they feed off us with exorbitant fees, and what do we get? Boilers exploding, power interruptions time and again and NO BACK UP in place which comes on instantly. We are fed up with these people and demand their immediate resignation or sacking, whatever comes first’.

Sources from Kenya Power, another parastatal in the cross hairs of Kenyan consumers and the media, denied any responsibility for these outages claiming the substation at JKIA was ‘powered up’ and that internal wiring and short circuits were responsible for the JKIA electricity problems. Another aviation source in Nairobi conceded this saying ‘this is possible, the contractors may be doing shoddy work, cutting wires when digging and that goes to project supervision. If KAA has no capacity to do a good supervisions of the work done to expand JKIA, the must employ competent engineers to do that for them, and it also casts a very bad light on the contractors they are using to build our airport. If already now there are such big problems, what will those buildings look like in a few years, or will the apron spaces crack up and get potholes for shoddy workmanship? There is something seriously wrong at KAA and best key managers now leave and make space for new recruits from the private sector who can do the job’.

While no one at Kenya Airways, the biggest user of services at JKIA, would go on official record, it was nevertheless learned that the airline will seek immediate audience with the transport ministry in the morning to also demand instant improvements and changes at KAA. Two other airline executives from privately owned airlines using JKIA left open the question of compensatory damages, only saying that this will be discussed within the airlines’ own regular meetings to devise a strategy and way forward.

Watch this space as the JKIA saga and the drama at KAA continue.


Article Courtesy