The national carrier Kenya Airways has fallen back into loss making territory with a Sh12.15 billion net loss in the first six months of 2025. This loss comes after a record profit of Sh5.4 billion that the national carrier posted in the full year 2025. Kenya Airways (KQ) had also reported a net profit of Sh513 million in the first six months of 2024.
The airline has blamed the loss on its grounded aircraft. According to Kenya Airways chief executive officer Allan Kilavuka, 33 percent of the carrier’s wide-body aircraft was grounded for the first six months of this year. The grounding of the aircraft resulted in a 14 percent drop in passenger numbers and a 19 percent drop in Revenue Passenger Kilometres (RPKs).
In July this year, Bizna Kenya had reported that the airline was staring at losses following the grounding of the airline’s B787-8 Dreamliners over engine maintenance. At the time, Kilavuka had stated that the airline was expecting reduced revenues for the year.
“We are not happy that the [two KQ B787-8 Dreamliners] are grounded. We have lost 20 percent of our capacity, and that is going to affect our results this year because of the strain on our network,” he had said. “For a relatively small airline like us, losing 20 percent of capacity really us. So we are not able to deliver the amount of capacity that we had last year.”
The engines of the two aircrafts were expected to undergo an overhaul which is typically required every five years or after 3,000 flight cycles. Kenya Airways chief operations officer George Kamal had explained that the maintenance process usually takes 70 to 90 days. However, it had stretched all the way to 120 days due to increased demand for overhaul services globally.
“We have booked slots at General Electric Aerospace. However, the turnaround times, which increased significantly due to the supply chain, has really hurt all the airlines including Kenya Airways,” he had said.
Incidentally, this was the second year in a row that the national carrier was coming out to lament over disruptions cause by grounding of its aircraft. In May 2024, KQ had blamed the grounding of two of its 787 Dreamliners for the flight schedule disruptions it was experiencing. At the time, KQ stated that the two 787 Dreamliners had been grounded due to delayed engine and engine components delivery.
“We would like to inform our customers that we are experiencing some disruptions in our flight schedules, which are leading to abnormally high levels of delays. The main reason for these disruptions is the unscheduled and extended grounding of two of our 787 Dreamliners,” the national carrier had stated. The airline had further attributed disruptions on what it termed as unavailability of flight crew.
READ MORE: Kenya Airways makes Sh5.4 billion full year 2024 net profit; highest in its history
In the first half of this year, the total income for the national carrier dropped by 18.6 percent to Sh74.5 billion. Operating loss came in at Sh6.2 billion from the Sh1.3 billion that was reported in the first half of 2024.
At the same time, cash and equivalents went red by 10.8 percent to Sh4.2 billion while net cash from operations were red by 2.6 percent to Sh7.7 billion. Assets increased 0.7 percent to Sh180.4 billion.
