To anyone outside aviation, aircraft maintenance can appear disarmingly mundane, little different from the routine servicing of a motor vehicle. The reality is altogether more exacting. Whereas drivers may occasionally overrun a scheduled service interval by a few hundred kilometres with little consequence, aircraft operate under maintenance programmes prescribed by their manufacturers and enforced with uncompromising rigour, for reasons of safety rather than convenience.
Compliance, therefore, is not discretionary. Certification may be withheld, and often is, from operators that habitually disregard these requirements. In many jurisdictions, regulators go further still, suspending operations or, in egregious cases, imposing permanent bans on carriers found in flagrant breach of established standards.
Githunguri Member of Parliament Gathoni Wamuchomba’s recent remarks, though no doubt well-intentioned, reveal a thin grasp of the operational realities of Kenya Airways (KQ) and the economies of aircraft maintenance. She asserts, without evidence, that the national carrier has 11 aircraft grounded, alleging further that these planes have been idle for five years while lease payments continued unabated, imposing a heavy burden on taxpayers.
Wamuchomba appears unable to distinguish between aircraft that are grounded and those undergoing routine, scheduled maintenance. Within any airline’s network, flights are assigned specific tail numbers and each aircraft operates under a carefully calibrated schedule that allocates both flying hours and maintenance windows. These maintenance periods, planned way in advance, can range from as little as seven hours on the ground to as long as three months, depending on the nature of the check.
An aircraft is deemed grounded only when it has been withdrawn from service and barred from flight, either temporarily, for repairs or maintenance extending beyond three months, or design defects that render it unfit to fly until remedied and certified by aviation authorities. The distinction is decisive. Routine maintenance proceeds as part of an airline’s internal schedule and does not require regulatory inspection. Grounding, by contrast, does. In Kenya such aircraft fall under the explicit oversight of the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority.
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It is true that a number of KQ aircraft have been grounded at various points, though at different times and over different years. No single aircraft has been out of service for five years, let alone eleven aircraft grounded. What has occurred instead is extended maintenance, largely driven by global supply-chain disruptions that have delayed the delivery of critical spare parts. Contrary to Wamuchomba’s assertions, which attribute these extensions to managerial failings, such constraints have afflicted much of the global airline industry, particularly carriers with significant exposure to the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
Some aircraft have been placed on extended maintenance. Two Boing 737s, inducted in the second quarter of 2025, fall into this category. One returned to service on December 24 th; the second, initially scheduled to re-enter service this week, has been deferred to mid-January owing to shipping delays over the festive period.
Two Embraer E190s were inducted in August 2025. One resumed operation on December 18th. The other remains in maintenance pending the return of engines and landing gear currently undergoing mandatory overhauls at overseas facilities. After the mid-January release of the B737-800, five aircraft will remain temporarily grounded with a clear and sequenced plan in place for their recovery.
Airlines customarily pare back capacity during the low season, using the lull to undertake heavy maintenance and prepare their fleets for the demands peak travel. KQ is no exception. It has trimmed certain frequencies in line with softer seasonal demand, while exploiting the opportunity to service its aircraft comprehensively. Current projections suggest that the entire fleet will return to service by the first quarter of 2026, aided by easing supply-chain constraints and the airline’s participation in additional spare-parts pools.
None of this is obscure. The information is in the public domain and easily accessible to anyone inclined to look. That raises an awkward question: how could Wamuchomba, a seasoned journalist with ample investigative tools at her disposal, have so badly misconstrued the position at Kenya Airways?
