Kenya Airways Already Canceling Some New York Flights

Ben, run your own airline, you'll do it better.

@lucky - if you run your own airline would it have first class on it? Also, what planes would you use and where will it be based? I could imagine a Lucky Air 😉

I am sure this way to handle it suits the African mindset just fine. It’s not that important whether you arrive today or tomorrow or even the day after, as long as you ultimately get there. Who would be in such a hurry that they need to arrive on a specific day? How stressful.

@Lucky
KQ cancelled some of these flights in October even before they launched the route on the 28th. At that time they said frequencies would be 5-7 weekly till Dec 5th when flights would return to daily for the busy christmas travel time. I believe i even sent you a link on twitter.

This is a non-story. It means these flights probably weren't even bookable in the first place not unless one booked months ago.

I actually think that this has to do with plane availability as they should be getting their other B787 leased to Oman Air around now/December which would enable normal daily frequencies without affecting other routes - i remember reading sth about that months ago.

Carry on.

Same thing has been happening on the EWR-ABJ route that Ethiopian started running earlier this year. My outbound flight has been moved twice, once by 2 days, another time by 3 days.

Over the years I suspect many of us have spent extra nights in Nairobi because the KQ flight was cancelled.

Having passed through Nairobi once on KQ was enough. I had the pleasure to see the luggage handling area air side. What an incredible mess. Never seen anything like it.

Uh oh! I'm booked on this flight on Jan 5. Hopefully will be unaffected by this.

@Lucky - When will we get the full KQ trip report?!? We are all eagerly awaiting. Please get on that ASAP 🙂

@W cute concept, but I am sure he would face a lawsuit as there is already a Lucky Air in China.

@ Sam -- Hopefully within the next week, just finishing up the previous report. Fortunately I think you should be good on January 5 since I imagine that's still peak season for the holidays.

@ Sam -- Right, the issue here is that they haven't yet canceled any flights beyond December 6. It shows daily throughout winter. Yet they say that they will be canceling some flights, which is my issue.

I really want to try this route for my second safari, but I wholeheartedly agree this makes it impossible to book with confidence. I cant think of a single other TYPE of trip I'd take that is more inconvenienced by poorly thought out cancellations/scheduling than a trip to East Africa.

Yet they couldn't even honor a mistake fare for this route. Jeez. At least do it for the badly needed publicity.

@Sam + @ Lucky, they've actually informed their top travel agents of more cancellations than the ones that have already been removed from the schedule. (For KQ, agents are still a huge source of business, so sometimes give them a bit more notice)

@DC-PHLyer - So strange IMHO. If you know you are going to be canceling the flight, why not just remove it from the schedule ASAP. In the meantime people may be booking themselves onto flights that the airline has already decided to cancel and making travel plans around that. To Lucky's point, this doesn't seem like an ideal way to manage thinning the schedule.

@Daniel from Finland

I think you are spot on.
Which shows why ALL airlines should make sure they understand culture at both ends of a route.
Otherwise they are limiting their potential market significantly.

its like dealing with 9th graders.

Game changer!!!

My wife and I flew Kenya Airways, a few years back, in first class, only Mombasa to Nairobi , but upon boarding there were two persons in our seats . We both had same seat numbers on our boarding passes , they had got there first and I believe they were Kenyans .
I suspect a coordinated bumping of us, the "'European tourists for some important Kenyan nationals who were told to get on early (somehow ?) .
The Captain came out and said ''you can move to economy or get off ''.
No apologies or nice words .
We moved to economy as we had a Nairobi connection to Europe , applied for a refund and NEVER received it .'
What they did not know is that I speak Swahili and I understood what the crew and passengers were saying about us ...............I did not let on.
There are lots of alternatives to fly to Kenya , and for me Kenya Airways is not one of them .

Why people still think there is any quality or value for money flying on African airlines. They run their airlines like their countries. Ethiopian is the only airline in Africa offering semi decent service. SAA has been on a steady run down hill for 20 years

Lucky. I’m an avid reader of your blog and get some valuable advice from your reviews. I even enjoy reading your comments section too. But please start monitoring and censoring some of the comments. Some of them particularly the ones from @Daniel from Finland and @ Peter Brown above become increasingly racist and reek of white privilege and does not belong on a blog dedicated to aviation and frequent flyer programs. This is not the first time I have come across this. Its really unfortunate that these readers would resort to these sort of offensive comments on a forum like this. Majority of Africans are hard working honest people. FYI.

The racists comments have my jaw to the ground "they run their airlines like they run their countries" wow!! I'm Kenyan and African and this is just disgusting.
Let's stick to the topic at hand please