Over the last few months, Kenya Airways embarked on a turnaround program “Operation Pride” to improve its profitability, revisit its operating model and network, and seek a long term sustainable financial structure for its business.
Operation Pride will deliver over USD 200 million of value in various initiatives, half of which focus on increase in revenue and the other half on cost reduction.
“We are on track with our plan, having successfully implemented some of the initiatives such as the sale and sublease of aircrafts, the reduction of waste in catering, and renegotiation of some contracts”, the airline said in a statement.
“To achieve this, we have made some difficult decisions to make substantial changes on all aspects of our business including reducing our fleet in line with the current fiscal realities. It is in this light that we announced our intention to right size the organization to align with the reduced fleet size and improve productivity of our staff across the network”.
The Kenyan flag carrier issued a notice to right size through staff redundancies and redeployment on March 31, 2016 as required by law and update was issued to staff on May 4, 2016 following intense consultations with all parties involved.
“During this period we have stress-tested the accuracy of our right-sizing estimates in order to ensure that we have identified all possible ways to retain staff as well as securing the airlines long term operational efficiency,” said Group Managing Director & CEO Mbuvi Ngunze.
The airline commenced with the first phase of redundancies which will impact approximately 80 staff members.
“The decision communicated above is not made lightly, and I want to thank all employees for their tremendous resilience and commitment in serving our guests in challenging times for the company. I also want to thank our people affected in this process for their commitment and hard work and wish them every success in their future endeavors,” added Mbuvi.