Normally when businesses or companies are abbreviating their names, they prefer using the first letter from each word contained in the name and joining them together to form the code name.

This is not however the case for Kenya Airways (KQ) with many people questioning why the airline is referred to as KQ and not KA.

Well, Kenya Airways was founded in 1946 under the name East African Airways and served Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

The relations between the countries however did not last long and led to the collapse of East African Community which subsequently ended East African Airways whose headquarters were based in Nairobi.

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In 1977 Kenya Airways was set up from the remains of East African Airways and abbreviated as KQ. This is because the International Air Transport Association (IATA) had already assigned the abbreviation KA to a Korean airline (Korean Air).

IATA, an aviation body that works with airlines across the world, is the body responsible for issuing unique code names for all international airlines.

These codes are used to identify an airline in a wide variety of commercial scenarios: reservations, schedules, timetables, telecommunications, ticketing, cargo documentation, legal, tariffs, among others.

Kenya, therefore, had to take the code-name KQ and not ‘KA’ .