Asky inaugurates three-times weekly non-stop flights from JKIA to Lome

By Esther MULWA

Pan African airline – Asky Airlines Sunday inaugurated its entry to the Kenyan market, offering three times weekly direct flights from Nairobi to Lomé, Togo, effective October 1.

The flights will be leaving to and from JKIA in Nairobi to the airline’s hub, Gnassingbé Eyadéma International Airport in Lomé on Monday, Wednesday and Friday every week with a wider plan to expand to daily flights on the same route connecting all Ecowas countries, Central Africa including Johannesburg and Luanda in Angola.

“We are starting with three or four times flights a week but soon it will be a daily flight to Nairobi,” said Captain Whib Seif Abebe, ASky Airlines head of flight during the official ceremony held at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.

The new route adds to Asky’s list of destinations that it serves in West and Central Africa. The airline will fly a Boeing 737 Max three times a week from Nairobi to Lomé and vice versa.

Outbound flights from Nairobi will be on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays while inbound flights will be on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays.

This move is expected to tap into the travel demand from corporate travelers, traders as well as leisure travelers from West and Central African countries to Nairobi.

The Togolese airline now flies to 28 destinations in the continent, posing big competition to both KQ and Ethiopian Airlines which serves 34 and 63 destinations in Africa, respectively.

Plans are also underway for Kenya to have a state -of-the-art terminal at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) by 2037.

JKIA now serves close to 9million passengers annually, up from the 2 million it served following its construction in 1978, but the proposed upgrade could see the airfield handle up to 30million passengers in 4 years if those strategies finally pay off.

New board chairman of the Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) Caleb Kositany on Sunday announced that the government will in January 2024 break ground for the construction on the proposed new terminal – highlighting that the proposed modern terminal will be a game changer in the East African region.

“As a board we want to do it as quickly as possible and within the law. We will be identifying a contractor soon; it will be an open tender and it will most likely be a public private partnership (PPP), so that we get a good delivery or rather a new terminal,” said Kositany.