The national carrier Kenya Airways has announced wider half year net loss of Sh16.08 billion for the first six months of the current financial year. This meant that the carrier had seen its net loss increase by Sh3.9 billion from the net loss of Sh12.2 billion that was recorded in the previous half year 2025.
During the current half year period that was reviewed, operating loss increased to Sh10.64 billion from Sh6.24 billion while earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization, and restructuring margin (EBITDAR) which measures a company’s core operational performance and profitability fell to 8.4 percent from 10.5 percent.
The airline said that its operating costs were a major contributor to the poor performance with an increase of 13.8 percent to Sh91.9 billion. This outpaced the increase of 9.1 percent in revenue to Sh81.3 billion. Whereas revenue growth remained positive in the face of reduced capacity, costs grew at a higher rate than turnover. Cargo revenue went up by 17.5 percent to Sh8.77 billion.
“Our cargo target remains a 40 percent market share, with a capacity ambition of 250 tonnes per day. This will strengthen our cargo business and position us to capture more opportunities across the market,” said Kenya Airways Acting chief executive officer George Kamal.
Fuel was also highlighted as another contributor. The national carrier said that its fuel costs had gone up by 66 percent in the period under review due to the war and economic instability in the Middle East region that have impacted the flow of oil in the market.
“One of the challenges we faced in first half was increase in fuel prices, we also had global supply challenges that affected availability of our aircrafts,” said Kenya Airways Acting chief finance officer Mary Mwenga.
READ MORE: Allan Kilavuka walks away from KQ with Sh131 million in pocket
In the same period, Kenya Airways experienced lower capacity with its available seat kilometres falling down by 9 percent. At the same time, the balance sheet weakened due to liabilities that increased by Sh12.86 billion, with negative equity positioning widening by Sh15.79 billion.
Total assets depreciated by 1.6 percent to Sh180.3 billion. Non-current assets went down by 3.9 percent to Sh136.32 billion while current assets went up by 6.2 percent to Sh43.97 billion.
The half year loss was just Sh1.1 billion shy of the full year net loss of Sh17.2 billion that the airline recorded in the full year 2025. In that financial year, KQ blamed its heavy loss on the grounding of its wide body Dreamliner planes that were due for engine overhauls. “Overall performance and operations in the year 2025 were severely impacted primarily by the temporary grounding of three of the wide body fleet, Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner aircraft. This was driven by the global supply chain constraints and limited engine availability,” Kenya Airways had said in a statement.
