Friday, October 26, 2007

KQ-where to next?

  1. 19% fall in PAT for the first half after last year PAT fell
  2. Rivals eating into its lucrative EU route
  3. Delta to start direct flights from USA
  4. Cargo revenue being nibbled by Qatar and others
  5. Fuel prices going up so will hit the 2nd half
  6. Costs to repair customer service and loss of staff
Where is the good news for our fine Airline?
  • Africa routes-but we move fast and qualitatively consolidate the routes we've got so far and others
  • Persevere with Far East markets
  • Price smartly e.g. cheaper weekday flights from Europe
  • How has Delta been able to fly into Kenya if US is concerned about JKIA? There is a case for GoK to intervene and get KQ the same status
Price Comment: Price will find its floor over the next 6 months.

7 comments:

John Maina said...

Me fear that KQ's golden Era is gone and despite having the capacity doubt whether they are ready to compete with the big boys of the industry.

lmangoli said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
lmangoli said...

Government should be able to intervene. If not then theres a challenge for our 3 presidential candidates. what regulations are they going to put or what are they going to do to improve the operational integrity of businesses?

The Black Mamba said...

Looks like expenses are up while profit margins have been squeezed. African routes seem to be lucrative.

If KQ wants to conquer Europe they need to attract business travellers. You can imagine how much money BA and virgin are raking flying corporate travellers to and from London. May be they should introduce a gatwick flight to cater for US tourists connecting through gatwick instead of them having to fly through Dubai.

swaka said...

At the moment, I don't think the problem is the government, the main issue at hand is JKIA - separation of the arrival and departure terminals to achieve Category 1 status.

Airport upgrading is actually in progress and I think Delta is set to be the first airline to take advantage of the impending Category 1 status.

It can be remembered KQ actually turned down the offer to fly three times to Miami citing profitability concerns.

Maybe KQs Sky Team affiliation had something to do with the decision.

MainaT said...

JM-That is my worry. When things improved, I think they took their foot of the accelerator so to speak.
LM-I think GoK can help by speeding up work on JKIA.
Ssem-The Africa routes are lucrative, but what are KQ doing to raise the entry barriers for others. They'd need to improve their customer service to attract the business traveller. Re the USD change to the Euro, I think they had mentioned about doing this, don't know why they haven't
Swaka-I do recall that they had plans for Miami. Don't know hwy they haven't thought it thru. Maybe 20-25% of their European passengers are guys flying from the US

MainaT said...

You gave it to Raila. He has a solution for everyone for our problems. For KQ (which apparently GoK holds 75% and not 23% as many of us believe), he has a solution for their eroded cargo revenue. He will make sure KQ export miraa from Meru. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TaIN_4OpVU

Riiiggghhhhht.