Attention has recently been redirected to a sequence of articles in a leading daily which present themselves, with considerable self-regard, as exposès of alleged malfeasance at the national carrier Kenya Airways. The pieces contend, inter alia, that the grounded fleet afflicting the airline is “not misfortune but brazen looting.” They go on to assert that a “ruthless syndicate” within the company has been cannibalising aircraft on the tarmac, only to sell the purloined parts back to the airline as a sordid carousel of theft.
Such claims would merit scrutiny were they not so energetically undermined by the authors’ own handiwork. The articles betray a striking poverty of aviation literacy. This is apparent not merely in their failure to grasp the complexities of fleet management and maintenance economics, but even in their mishandling of the industry’s most basic elementary vocabulary, where “aircraft,” treated as a collective noun rather than a countable one, resists the authors’ clumsy pluralisation. The lapse is emblematic. Where precision is indispensable, conjecture is substituted; where facts are required, insinuation suffices. The result is less an investigation than an exercise in indignation dressed as journalism.
A glance at Aviation for Dummies 101, the sort of primer that one might have hoped unnecessary, would make plain that aircraft service parts fall into three broad categories. First come expendables: low-value trifles such as filters and O-rings, mercifully discarded after use. Next are repairables: components that may be mended when damaged but that do not require mandatory overhauls after a given number of cycles.
Finally, there are rotables, the aristocracy of aircraft parts – high-value, safety-critical items engineered to be repaired, overhauled and returned to service repeatedly, rather than unceremoniously scrapped, in the interests of both cost discipline and operational efficiency.
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This article fixates on rotables, riding on the assumption that they alone might tempt an enterprising thief. Even so, the suggestion that such components could be spirited away from an aircraft on the tarmac belongs more to the realm of imaginative journalism than to operational reality.
Most rotables demand specialised tooling and the attention of certified technicians; their removal is governed by exacting safety and maintenance protocols. In practice, therefore, rotables are not pilfered under the open sky but extracted, if at all, under the confines of a hanger, where Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) activities are conducted.
Another consideration bears emphasis. Each rotable component carries a unique serial number and an accompanying data plate recording its usage, maintenance history and regulatory compliance. The notion that a KQ employee could spirit away such a component and later sell it back is therefore implausible. Rotables are serialized, exhaustively tracked and readily traceable to the specific aircraft from which they were removed.
Nor is the procurement of rotables a casual or informal undertaking. Such components may be sourced only from approved, reputable suppliers and must be accompanied by an unimpeachable parts pedigree. Any item lacking this documentary lineage is summarily excluded from the global aviation supply chains to which KQ, like its peers, is bound.
What the journalists appear to have mistaken for theft is, in fact, rob-to-service: the controlled transfer of rotables and serviceable components between aircraft, a routine expedient used to preserve operational continuity amid global spare-parts shortages. Far from being furtive or improvised, the practice is universally accepted, tightly regulated and widely employed across the aviation industry.
Any rotable or serviceable component removed from one aircraft and installed on another within the same fleet is subject to exhaustive tracking, inspection, certification and documentation, all in strict accordance with the standards imposed by aviation regulatory authorities. To portray this as pilferage is not merely inaccurate; it betrays a misunderstanding of how modern aviation maintenance actually works.
Aviation is a technically intricate business governed by interlocking operational, financial and regulatory restraints. Those who presume to report on it owe their readers more than armchair conjecture. Commentary unmoored from an understanding of how an airline such as Kenya Airways actually functions is not merely lazy; it is actively harmful. At best, it misinforms the public; at worst, it undermines confidence in the national carrier and strays into territory with implications for national security.
