The Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) will spend Sh350 million to fix potholes at Wilson Airport in a move aimed at reducing increasing number of plane mishaps at the facility.

Kenya Civil Aviation Authority director-general Gilbert Kibe told the Business Daily in an interview on Friday that major works on the project will start once local firms with planes exceeding seven tonnes operating at Wilson airport relocate to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) Nairobi.

Local air operators have pointed at the potholed runways as the cause of the punctures at the airport that have led to some planes skidding off the runways.

“The immediate requirement for major rehabilitation at Wilson Airport is Sh350 million. This is what we require for now,” said Mr Kibe.

Mr Kibe did not give a specific timeline within which he expects work on the project to be finished. “We are working with the support of the Kenya Airport sAuthority on this project. They are determined to do it,” he said.

Kenya Airways has installed a new revenue management solution which will enable the airline to optimise ticket sales.

KQ, as the national carrier is known by its international code, says one of the biggest challenges for airlines in revenue management is striking a balance between high-priced late bookings and low-priced early bookings.

The new system, by travel technology firm Amadeus, will enable the company to maximise ticket prices across various booking times while remaining competitive.

Travellers seeking bargains often compare ticket prices from different airlines.

“As the market dynamics and our customer behavioural patterns change, it is important to continue innovating and improving processes to meet those changes,” Sebastian Mikosz, KQ’s chief executive said in a statement.

“We will be able to know and understand our customers even better and in turn avail more competitive fares to them.”

He added that this is part of the airline’s turnaround strategy aimed at growing revenues. The company has been making losses and the government, its major shareholder, plans to nationalise it by buying out other investors.

“This partnership will strengthen the relationship between Kenya Airways and Amadeus,” Maher Koubaa, a regional executive at Amadeus, said in a statement.

“We are dedicated to working closely together to deliver a new approach to revenue management to support the complex and specific needs of this rapidly evolving airline.”

Our Source: https://www.businessdailyafrica.com/corporate/companies/KQ-rolls-out-ticket-sales-management-system/4003102-5373636-f26badz/index.html

After an eventful month which saw the Kenyan aviation regulator(KCAA) impose a ban on its aircraft prompting the suspension of its operations, local low cost carrier Silverstone Air is set to resume operations in March 2020. On return, the airline will move their operations to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) from its current base at the Wilson Airport.

Speaking to the KATA Weekly Travel News Silverstone Air Commercial Director Mr. Patrick Oketch said that contrary to earlier assertions that the airline was closing shop, the management had retreated to work on a strategy that will see them return bigger and better to serve their clients.

He reiterated that the airline’s current focus was to ensure that all passengers that had booked flights prior to the suspension of services are rebooked to other airlines and asked all travel agents that were still holding bookings with the airline to contact them.

KATA CEO Mr. Nicanor Sabula welcomed the news and wished the airline all the best on their relaunch. “Challenges in this industry are part of the process of growth. They are what makes an organisation stronger and better able to mitigate similar problems, should they arise. We wish Silverstone the best and laud them for their plans to make a comeback,” Mr Sabula said.

The Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) lifted the week-long suspension it had imposed on Silverstone Air’s Dash 8 Series Aircrafts on November 20. In a statement released to the public on Tuesday by the Director General Capt. Gilbert Kibe, KCAA confirmed that the airline had provided satisfactory corrective measures following comprehensive compliance audits conducted between 24^th October and 15^th November 2019.

The airline however did not resume operations instead opting to sort out passengers that had booked flights for December through to January.

The Kenya Association of Travel Agents (KATA) last week signed a partnership agreement with I&M Bank to provide a cashless system for KATA members to receive payment from their clients.

KATA CEO Mr. Nicanor Sabula alongside the I&M Bank CEO Mr Kihara Maina signed the agreement at the I&M Bank offices in Nairobi. Through the partnership, KATA became an Independent Sales Organization (ISO) authorized to resell the E-commerce solution to its members.

Speaking during the event, Mr. Sabula noted that the move towards an e-commerce platform is a big boost for KATA as it is well aligned with the Association’s long-term agenda of promoting digital transformation among her member travel agencies.

“As you all are aware, the travel industry has been one of the most disrupted industries by technology in the last decade. A great deal of business has moved online and it is important that our local travel agents leverage the online platforms in order to retain existing and acquire new clients. We are therefore confident that the move towards having a safe and secure online payment platform for our members will help us consolidate the online market place,” the KATA CEO said.

Also speaking during the event, Mr. Kihara stated, “I&M Bank recognizes e-commerce as one of the most important facets of the Internet to have emerged in recent times. This is why through I&M Bank’s WebPay service, the Bank offers businesses and especially the Travel industry an e-payment platform to accept online payments for sale of products and services through their websites.”

“The government has earmarked tourism as one of the six key growth sectors of the country’s economic pillars. It is with this background that the Bank will continue to innovate in the E-commerce space to help scale up this industry’s growth ultimately benefitting both the Bank and the country’s economy. We at I&M Bank are proud to partner with KATA to enhance the tours and travel industry through e-commerce that allows merchants to enjoy the freedom of modern banking,” he added.

His sentiments were echoed by Mr. Sabula who noted that the two organisations had a long-standing partnership having collaborated for the just concluded 2019 KATA Convention.

“This is just the beginning of better things to come and with this agreement, we are confident that we can only forge ahead building bigger and better collaborations. As an association, we will continue working in tandem with like-minded organizations like yourselves to ensure we drive this industry into prosperity.” Mr. Sabula said.

I&M Bank E-Commerce platform, known as I&M WebPay, is an online payment service that allows merchants to accept card online payments through their websites in both Kenya Shillings and US dollars. I&M Bank is the first bank in the region to introduce online payment acceptance to the market.

Lufthansa General Manager Sales for East Africa Mr. Tobias Ernst is set to leave the country after a four-and-a-half-year stint in Kenya.

Mr Ernst, who will take up the same position in Morocco in January 2020 will be replaced by Mr Andre Schulz who is currently the General Manager, Sales in South Africa.

Through a farewell note to the Kenya Association of Travel Agents (KATA) Mr Ernst expressed gratitude to the association for their support as business partners during his time in Kenya.

“Together we have substantially strengthened the overall LH-Group (Lufthansa & Swiss) position in Kenya. I would like to thank you and all your KATA members wholeheartedly for this great support already at this point of time,” he said.

He pointed out that the support by KATA members was a major contributing factor responsible for Lufthansa now being firmly positioned amongst the top 5 of the international airlines in the Kenyan market.

KATA CEO Mr Nicanor Sabula wished him well in his new position and promised to accord his successor support as he takes on his new position in the Kenyan market.

“The travel agents’ community in Kenya and I in particular will remember you as an astute airline manager who stood with us during our most trying moments and one who understood our market better. This is clearly demonstrated by the growth of LH market share in Kenya,” he said

The KATA community looks forward to welcoming Mr Schulz and wishes Mr Ernst all the best in his new designation.

It has now emerged that Kenyans will have to wait a little longer before accessing the South African E-visa that had been scheduled for roll out at the end of November. Sources told KATA Weekly Travel News that the process had encountered some technical problems due to the bulky documents required to be uploaded onto the system by applicants.

“The implementation of the online platform is still on track and should be successfully rolled out latest by January 2020” said the source.

Contrary to expectations, the online visas will however only be available to Kenyan tourists visiting South Africa and not those working or studying in the country as it expires within a short period of time.

Visitors to South Africa require a Visa for travel. The current process requires Kenyans to visit the embassy and physically make an application.

Spokesperson for the South African Department of Home affairs Siya Qoza, was earlier quoted saying that “the pilot will be conducted with Kenya first at the OR Tambo and Lanseria airports. At the end of the month, we will evaluate the project and look which other countries to expand the e-Visa system to.”

This online platform will simplify the process as one will only be required to fill out their passport and travel details. The online application has to be made in Kenya before travel and the e-Visa presented in printed copy or digitally during travel.

The online procedure requires one to fill out the application form, pay the South African e-Visa fee and will later receive the online visa at the email address provided on the application form.

Validity and conditions of the E-Visa will be communicated once the program is rolled out.

This week in the travel tech industry, the first airline ticket through a blockchain has been issued. TripAdvisor has launched self-service advertising and Amadeus for Developers offers Artificial Intelligence APIs to stimulate the next wave of travel tech innovation.

Hahn Air becomes the first airline to fly a passenger holding a ticket issued via the blockchain using Winding Tree’s open-source travel distribution platform on a scheduled flight from Dusseldorf to Luxemburg.

The first “blockchain passengers” were Maksim Izmaylov, founder of Winding Tree, Davide Montali, CIO of Winding Tree, and Frederick Nowotny, head of sales engineering at Hahn Air.

Using the Winding Tree platform, Hahn Air is able to list inventory, manage the reservation requests, and receive payments once the booking process is complete. Accepted payment methods are cash, credit card, or cryptocurrency (LIF token or Ether).

Blockchain technology holds many advantages for the different parties involved in the process of booking an airline ticket:

• It is open-source, meaning all market participants such as airlines, travel companies and distribution systems can easily connect and exchange transactions.
• All market participants can directly interact with each other and perform transactions without intermediaries thereby reducing costs.
• It is 100% secure. All of the necessary information is stored in a decentralised ledger which is verified by millions of sources and therefore cannot be changed or tampered with.

“We at Hahn Air are constantly exploring new technologies and we are proud to now demonstrate our technical capability to issue blockchain-powered Hahn Air tickets. We are pleased to be partnering with Winding Tree, the most established company when it comes to distributing travel inventory in the blockchain. Our goal is to investigate and monitor the opportunities this technology holds for travel distribution, even if widespread acceptance is still a vision of the future,” Nowotny said.

TripAdvisor Media Manager is a self-service platform that empowers small and medium-sized businesses and agencies to control their own cross-platform advertising campaigns on TripAdvisor. It is available to global advertisers, supporting more than 15 currencies, and offers a wide variety of targeting options to reach their core customers.

The launch of TripAdvisor Media Manager follows the introduction of a suite of new-to-market advertising services and solutions that enable tourism and non-endemic advertisers to reach more relevant, high intent audiences on and off the TripAdvisor platform.

“We’re excited to enable local and small businesses to easily and quickly create and upload their own campaigns that they can push live on TripAdvisor in a streamlined way. The real benefit is the ability to quickly grow a business by reaching nearly 460 million loyal, engaged and connected travellers who want to hear from brands that are relevant to them,” said Christine Maguire, vice president, advertising revenue for TripAdvisor.

Designed to help individual suppliers, niche partners and advertisers reach qualified audiences, businesses can ensure their content reaches consumers through three targeting options: user location, browsed destinations or recent travel planning activities on TripAdvisor.

The intuitive, automated platform lets advertisers upload their own creative for fast TripAdvisor review and approval. The native listing format enables advertisers to build their ads directly in-platform to seamlessly fit in with the TripAdvisor mobile experience. Advertisers can set their own campaign budget and schedule, and then monitor results and adjust as needed in a real-time dashboard.

In an industry first, Amadeus makes ready-to-use, AI-driven insights and functionality available to innovators and developers, helping them create exciting new travel solutions.

Amadeus is empowering start-ups and independent developers to gain an edge by launching a new set of AI Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) as part of the Amadeus for Developers program. These APIs will allow developers to build solutions that can predict travel intent, traveller behaviour, and flight delays, amongst others – without needing any prior background in AI or data.

This is the first time in the travel industry that AI capabilities are made available to start-ups and independent developers via open APIs.  Amadeus is providing ready-to-implement predictive models based on valuable insights and functionalities fed by Amadeus’ vast sources of travel data.

These APIs enable travel innovators to create exciting AI-based apps with brand new features and disruptive business models that can transform the travel experience. The insights are offered under Amadeus’ Self-Service API catalogue for partners, and any developer can start testing the APIs in less than three minutes.

Early adopters already demonstrated the value of these AI APIs at Amadeus’ hackathon in London on 9-10 November 2019. The hackathon showcased experimental uses of the APIs which include a ‘buddy’ app to reduce travel stress, and solutions to help travellers find activities to do at their destination and during flight layovers.

“At Amadeus, we constantly look for opportunities to take friction out of travel. That’s why we’re very excited to make these ground-breaking AI-driven insights and tools available to the travel industry for the first time. They will empower innovators to create amazing applications thanks to the power of AI and simplify the traveller’s journey” said Stefan Ropers, president, strategic growth businesses, Amadeus.

 

Our Source: https://www.traveldailymedia.com/travel-tech-this-week-november-28-2019/

 

Turkish airline AtlasGlobal, previously named Atlasjet and launched in 2001 has just suspended all flights. The reason for the suspension is quite vague: they announce on their social media channels that it is entering into a new phase of restructuring in order to provide a “unique flight experience“.

That unique flight experience will not happen for the passengers that booked until 15 December as AtlasGlobal redirects all passenger to its call centre. From 16 December, the airline promises to relaunch all sales channels including website, mobile apps, etc… and plans to relaunch on 21 December.

The airline is mostly flying out of Istanbul airport and has 16 Airbus aircraft in its fleet.

Official statement

Dear Passengers,

As per the decision taken by our airline, we have entered a new phase of restructuring in order to provide you unique flight experience. As of the 26th of November 2019, we have temporarily suspended all our flights.

During this period, all flight irregularities on the tickets until the 15th of December 2019 will be assessed by our teams.
All procedures regarding involuntary change and/or refund will be announced on the 16th of December 2019, on our website. Please contact callcenter@atlasglb.com with your PNR and flight information should you have any further inquiries and questions.

Tickets sales will be suspended until the 16th of December 2019 on all our sales channels including our website, mobile apps, etc.

Our Source:  https://www.aviation24.be/airlines/atlasglobal/turkish-airline-atlasglobal-temporarily-suspends-all-operations/

Kigali — Jambojet has made its inaugural flight to Kigali, becoming the first low-cost carrier to fly the route.

The airline, which recently expanded its fleet with two brand new De Havilland Dash 8 – 400, will be flying once daily from its hub at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport to Kigali International Airport.

Jambojet Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Allan Kilavuka, said the airline is taking advantage of the huge opportunity the African market has to offer.

“We mark a major milestone in our regional expansion strategy. Our aim is to grow our footprint across the continent while offering a unique product for these markets. We expect that our low-cost model will enable more people to fly affordably, conveniently, and safely,” Kilavuka said Monday during the inaugural flight.

The airline is also eyeing South Sudan, Mogadishu, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Congo, Union of the Comoros and Malawi.

Jambojet currently flies to five local destinations namely Malindi, Ukunda, Mombasa, Kisumu, Eldoret and one regional destination-Entebbe, Uganda – from its hub in Nairobi.

Since inception in 2014, Jambojet, which was, in July 2019, awarded the coveted IATA Operational Safety Audit certification (IOSA), has flown over 3million passengers, 30 percent of whom are first-time flyers.

Our Source: https://allafrica.com/stories/201911260732.html

The revival of Uganda Airlines and Air Tanzania have raised the stakes for the aviation industry in the East African region as the two state-owned flag carriers fight for a slice of the sector currently dominated by international carriers, SADAB KITATTA KAAYA.

As Uganda Airlines launched two additional routes to Mombasa in Kenya and Tanzania’s Kilimanjaro International Airport, Tanzanian authorities were looking at possible partnerships with Uganda to cut out the possibility of unhealthy competition between the two countries’ airlines.

Uganda Airlines resumed commercial flights on August 28, almost three years after the revival of Air Tanzania in September 2016. But since the two airlines are fishing from the same pond for passengers on their regional routes, Atashasta Nditiye, Tanzania’s deputy minister of Works, Transport and Communications, suggests that the two airlines can complement each other with Uganda Airlines feeding Air Tanzania’s long-haul routes.

With two Airbus A220-300 and Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner in its fleet, Air Tanzania operates routes to Mumbai, India and Guangzhou, China, and plans to start flights to Thailand which are popular trade and tourism destinations for East Africans.

“Instead of competition, we can complement each other by Uganda Airlines flying passengers from its various destinations to Air Tanzania’s hub at Julius Nyerere International Airport, Dar-es-Salaam for Air Tanzania to take them to its long-haul destinations,” Nditiye said.

The second area of cooperation is in revamping the East African Civil Aviation Academy also known as Soroti Flying School, proposing that Tanzania’s civil aviation authority works together with Uganda’s civil aviation authority to revamp the flying school.

“We need to work together and empower Soroti flying school so that it builds capacity to train more pilots and other aviation personnel from the region,” Nditiye said.

Soroti Flying School, as is popularly known, was established by the East African Community (EAC) in the early 1970s. But with the collapse of the EAC in 1977, the school was taken over by the Ugandan government that has in recent years been struggling to keep it afloat.

With the revival of the regional bloc in 1999, ownership of the school became a major issue as partner states pushed to have the school’s ownership revert to the EAC. Nditiye’s proposals on the management of the flying school seemingly caused discomfort within the Ugandan delegation. To that effect, Aggrey Bagiire, Uganda’s state minister for Transport, told journalists that the Tanzanian minister spoke without information.

According to Bagiire, there are ongoing efforts by the Ugandan government to solve the issues that have for long dogged the operations of the flying school. For instance, Bagiire said, “President Museveni bought new aircraft” for the school that its fleet now has two twin-engine planes and seven single-engine planes.

Depending on their level, flight instructors earn on average between $4,000 (Shs 14.6 million) and $6,000 (Shs 21.9 million).

Much as its fleet has improved, the school still struggles to get fuel to run the aircraft which might affect the students.

“We need more money for fuel because fuel is key in aviation. When students are training to get licensed, flight time is considered, and if there is no fuel for them to fly the planes, they may not progress,” Bagiire told The Observer.

The flying school’s runway is meanwhile in the process of being improved so that student pilots stop moving to Entebbe to train how to take off and land at night because the school has no runway lights.

Our Source: https://allafrica.com/stories/201911251010.html