Kenya Airways has ramped up flights to Heathrow with flexibility in hours allowing business people to travel to London and back on the same day, cutting costs that would be incurred in accommodation.
KQ will now fly to London twice a day bringing a total of 14 weekly flights in a week, making it one of the routes with the highest frequencies.
The increased frequencies will come in handy for business people who want to get to the UK in the morning for trade meetings and return to Nairobi on the same day.
One of the KQ’s schedules for outbound flights indicates the carrier will leave Nairobi at midnight and get to London at 6am with a return flight from Heathrow at 5pm.
The carrier will deploy high capacity B787 Boeing Dreamliner on the route, to meet an increase in demand for passengers travelling for business, education, or leisure.
“The additional weekly flights will cater to the increased market demand for this route and growing passenger numbers,” said the carrier.
The flights are open for booking as the twice-a-day trips start on October 29, 2023, according to the schedule issued by the airline.
This comes at a time when Uganda’s national carrier plans to start flying to Heathrow after getting authorisation from the UK aviation regulator.
Increased frequencies now cement KQ’s position as the top carrier in connecting passengers to Europe. A lot of travellers from Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda use JKIA as a transit point to Europe given the short layover time.
Uganda Airlines was granted permission to start flying to London and it had earlier announced that it will commence flights to Heathrow this summer.
However, since Entebbe Airport has yet to get clearance from the UK Civil Aviation Authority, they can only fly through an intermediate airport that is certified by the agency, with Nairobi considered the best option.
The Ugandan carrier may have to wait for at least two years before the Entebbe Airport is cleared for security by the UK aviation agency.
Should the carrier choose to use an intermediary airport, its crew and passengers will have to disembark and go through security screening before they are allowed back to the aircraft. This means that the stopover will be a technical one and the carrier may not be allowed to drop or pick passengers.
Kenya Airways has been operating flights to London since its inception as a gateway to the United Kingdom.
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