Business for East Africa’s largest airline company Kenya Airways has reported a gigantic loss amounting of almost U$300million attributed to the impact of Covid-19 pandemic.
According to the state carrier it made a total loss of U$ 333181610.82(Sh36.6 billion) after tax loss for the financial year ending December 2020 compared to Sh12.9 billion loss in 2019.
The loss exceeds the amount of money allocated to Kenya’s six counties combined in the Financial Year 2019/2020.
The financial year under focus was the worst in the history of the aviation industry. Airline passenger traffic was reduced to levels last seen in 1999, wiping out 21 years of airline passenger traffic growth.
During the period, Kenya Airways shut down its scheduled network operations from April to July last year following a directive from the government to suspend all scheduled passenger services into and out of the country to curb the spread covid-19 virus.
“It has been a tough year where we have faced unprecedented challenges. The situation continues to be difficult even as we gradually resume our operations, mainly due to the depressed demand for air travel, with recovery to 2019 levels expected to take between 3 to 4 years,” said the airline in a tweet.
The Group’s total revenue during the year reduced by 58.8% to Sh52.8 billion as a result of reduced flight capacity aligned to depressed demand.
Approximately 70% of total passengers carried last year were flown during the first three months of the year, demonstrating the drop in demand as the global crisis deepened during the year.
Passengers uplifted in the year amounted to 1.8 million, a reduction of 65.7% from prior year.
Similarly, passenger revenue declined by 67.5% from Sh103.6 billion reported in 2019 to Sh33.7billion reported last year evidencing the continuing effect of the pandemic.
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