The news that Kenya Airways is overpricing its esteemed customers as compared to other airlines such as the Ethiopian Airline is news well-crafted out of malice and propaganda without sticking to any facts.
The fact is that the tickets are only priced high peak demand and this only happens when customers rush in to book their tickets in the last minute and this is also according to the quality of services.
Kenya Airways is still coming off a fairly high season and the competition has now picked up as currently the airline is flying between 10 thousand and 12 thousand people daily.
This has come after fare comparison done by the Centre for Aviation showed that Kenya Airways charged about $2,300 (about Sh230,000) on the Nairobi-London route, compared to Ethiopian Airline’s charge of $949 (about Sh94,900) and South African Airways’ $887 (about Sh88,700) but factually this is not the truth. The truth is as shown below compared to Ethiopian Airline.
- From Nairobi to London, Kenya Airways charges 940 US dollars while the Ethiopian Airline charges 949 US dollars.
- From Kigali to Mumbai, Kenya Airways charges 795.69 US dollars while the Ethiopian Counterpart charges 820.69 US dollars.
- From Addis Ababa to Johannesburg, Kenya Airways charges 492.20 US dollars while the Ethiopian Airline charges 667.20 US dollars.
- From Addis Ababa to Accra, those who use Kenya Airways pay 917.35 US dollars while those who use the Ethiopian Airline pay 1139.00 US dollars.
- And from Addis Ababa to Mumbai Kenya Airways charges 464.69 US dollars while Ethiopian Airline charges 549.69 US dollars.
These are the real facts about the pricing which no one wants to look at and yet they are the genuine pricing.
There are, however, one could find incidents where, say, eight ticket prices have been booked in the last minute which could trigger that (higher fee), but it is not representative of the average price for every ticket purchased.