Kenya Airways has heightened competition for air tickets in the festive season with the bottom low prices for Mombasa and Kisumu.
The national carrier is offering Sh4,880 for a one-way ticket to Mombasa and Kisumu, and Sh9,755 for a return journey.
The new prices are expected to work to the disadvantage of the budget carriers such as KQ subsidiary Jambojet, which might have to adjust their ticket cost to attract travellers.
Low cost carriers have already adjusted their prices upwards to reflect the high demand that is expected in the week to Christmas with the fares for some days going as high as Sh10,000 for a one-way ticket to the coastal routes.
Kenya Airways enjoys high capacity and is expected to deploy larger aircraft during the festive season, especially on the coastal routes that normally records high demand for holiday seekers. The airline normally deploys high capacity Boeing 787 Dreamliner to service the route during holidays when demand for passengers is up.
Local flights resumed in July this year after a four-month hiatus caused by the Covid-19, which saw grounding of all the airlines as a containment measure for the virus.
International flights resumed on August 1 but it has suffered low demand, with KQ saying the demand for domestic travel has outperformed the international one.
According to Kenya Airways, domestic demand has increased to 79 percent of the cabin factor when compared with international flights that are currently at 55 percent with the numbers expected to remain low because of a second wave of Covid-19 in Europe.
The carrier has already increased the number of flights to coast to nearly ten in a day from a low of two when the domestic travel resumed in July.