Proud moment for Kenya opens up challenges and opportunities

What you need to know:

  • The understanding is that this is a 15-hour flight forward (NBO-JFK) and a 14-hour flight in reverse (JFK-NBO). Give or take four hours, this is the 25th longest commercial flight in the world.

  • Only five other African countries have this Category 1 (direct flight) access — Cape Verde, Egypt, Ethiopia, Nigeria and South Africa.

  • That there are direct flights to the US is not a KQ prerogative. Kenya’s national airline, which has caused us serious national embarrassment, is now the agent, not the principal of Kenyans.

Today, one of Kenya’s most important national assets is expected to demonstrate its true value. The inaugural direct flight by Kenya Airways (KQ) from Nairobi to New York City will happen. Boarding passes shall show, for the first time ever, a direct NBO-JFK flight.

If this happened in the old days, we would have called it the “green to red” flight — from “(Green) city in the sun” to the “Big (Red) Apple”. That is what nature does; what our climate change agenda must fix. Now it’s the “super-red eye” sojourn. But that is fine.

LONGEST FLIGHT

The understanding is that this is a 15-hour flight forward (NBO-JFK) and a 14-hour flight in reverse (JFK-NBO). Give or take four hours, this is the 25th longest commercial flight in the world.

In local time-speak, it means late night departure from Nairobi for next day early-morning arrival in New York. On return, noon departure from New York for next day, mid-morning arrival in Nairobi. Operationally, KQ promises that these will be daily flights. Marketing-wise, Brand Kenya must up its game from recent Twitter posts on “breakfast in Nairobi, and dinner in New York”, and think in reverse.

This could be our Kenyan “wake up” moment in four ways.

First, our authorities must maintain the discipline to keep this route. Call this the governance imperative. KQ will land in New York not in, and of itself, and not because of the Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) that manages our airports. It happens because of two things.

SPECIAL ACCESS

First, the Kenya Civil Airports Authority (KCAA) passed muster according to the International Civil Aviation Authority’s (ICAO) International Aviation Safety Assessment (IASA) run by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). We got clearance from the FAA in 2017.

Only five other African countries have this Category 1 (direct flight) access — Cape Verde, Egypt, Ethiopia, Nigeria and South Africa.

Then, in 2018, KQ as an actual airline gained authorisation from the US Department of Transportation to access US airspace directly, or via approved code-sharing partners.

Let us be clear. Any governance issues that question KCAA capacity or capability will set us back to our previous Category 2 “no-fly zone”, where Ghana sits, with Curacao and the Island of Saint Martin.

Second, and most obviously, the security imperative. The reorganisation of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport by KAA has been a great response to the global security agenda that created the IASA framework in the first place. It has been effective, not invasive. Being safe always beats being sorry.

These first two points speak to Kenya’s continuous need for a proper backbone as a country that must continually seek to live wisely, while playing a humble but important part, in our global international order.

HUB

Third, the economic imperative. The simplistic official analysis has been about Americans coming to Kenya for three things; tourism, trade and investment.

The long view should be about JKIA, as one of Kenya’s hubs of business, investment, job opportunities and shared regional prosperity. In the long run, real development as people, not projects; and a new politics about transformation, not aggravation.

Which brings us to the fourth and final KQ imperative. That there are direct flights to the US is not a KQ prerogative. Kenya’s national airline, which has caused us serious national embarrassment, is now the agent, not the principal of Kenyans.

Many wonder why no past financial malfeasance has been prosecuted, or people jailed.

Without any fear of contradiction, I suspect that this could be an unlikely Kenyan moment. Hope always works better than fear, so let’s embrace it!

The writer is a management consultant.