Former Safaricom CEO Michael Joseph has been named as the chairman of the troubled Kenya Airways, replacing Amb. Dennis Awori who is retiring.
Ambassador Awori was only appointed as Chairman of the KQ Board of Directors in Nov 2015, when he took over from long serving Evanson Mwaniki who had indicated that he would not stand for re-election as a board member during the concluded Annual General Meeting.
In a related development, KQ has given a notice that the airline will cease flights to Abuja effective Nov 15 in a similar move taken by Emirates, which has also, due to a sharp decline in traffic numbers, decided to pull out of the Nigerian capital and only fly, for the time being, once a day to Lagos.
KQ will maintain its daily service to Lagos too. While the Nigerian market has decidedly gone soft with outbound traffic, it remains a major contributor of passengers not just to Nairobi but into the Middle East, India and Asia network of KQ.