Kenya Airways has deepened its presence in Asia with the signing of a flight deal with China Eastern Airlines (CEA), the second such agreement with the airline in the past one month.

The code-sharing agreement will see the two airlines market each other’s daily flights between Nairobi-Bangkok, Bangkok-Shanghai, Shanghai-Bangkok, and Bangkok-Nairobi.

The agreement will help KQ improve on already increasing passenger numbers in the Middle East, Far East, and Indian regions by exploiting the Bangkok route.

These high-yielding regions recorded a 16.5 per cent growth in passengers to 155,940 in the second quarter to September, an improvement the airline attributed to increased capacity and one it seems keen on solidifying.

“Kenya Airways seeks to strengthen its presence in China by offering better connection options to its passengers from Africa,” said KQ chief executive officer Titus Naikuni when announcing the deal with China’s second largest airline.

Code- sharing agreements allow airlines (marketing carrier) to sell seats on their aircraft as if they were their own and passengers later transferred onto a different aircraft (operating carrier) where the former lacks physical presence.

Operating carriers is such deals have actual presence in the change-over destination providing the aircraft, crew, and ground-handling support. Such agreements allow airlines to increase their footprint in new destinations without necessarily having more scheduled flights or aircraft.

They also allow passengers to conveniently make single flight bookings at the country of departure. “Our association with CEA gives us an opportunity to offer our customers a seamless connection to and from China,” said Mr Naikuni.

Monday’s deal brings to 18 the number of code sharing agreements between KQ and international carriers, having penned similar ones with Saudia Airlines and Korean Air early this year.

The KQ-CEA deal also comes on the back of a similar pact signed in the first week of November with Vietnam Airlines, the country’s national carrier.

The agreement has enabled passengers to travel via Bangkok on to Hanoi (Vietnam’s capital city) and Ho Chi Minh city and vice versa daily as the airline races to open up the South East Asian market.

KQ’s refocused efforts towards Asia come at a time when the airline has cut capacity on European routes — which account for about 22 per cent of its revenues — as the Euro crisis cuts earnings. The reduced capacity saw passenger numbers to the region drop to 89,852 for the second quarter to September compared to 108,835 in a similar quarter last year, a 17.4 per cent slump.

According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), traffic growth for Europe has remained flat since the beginning of this year in line with the economic pessimism on the continent.

However, KQ’s traffic to the Middle East and Asia jumped 16.5 per cent to 155,940 travellers as additional flights to New Delhi and Jeddah began to bear fruit.



The Asian market’s positive performance was, however, offset by lower traffic on European, Africa, and domestic routes forcing KQ’s passenger numbers to remain at just over one million for the period under review.