Kenya Airways made an operating profit in 2023 of the back of recovering passenger business – the first time since 2017. However, a heavy currency exchange impact kept its loss-making at a net level.
The Kenyan flag carrier posted an operating profit of KSh10.5 billion ($78.8 million) for the year ended December 2023, against a loss of KSh5.6 billion in 2022 and marks the SkyTeam carrier’s first surplus since posting an operating profit of KSh1.5 billion in 2017.
Chairman Michael Joseph called the $80m (£63m) excess a “significant milestone”, the AFP news agency quotes him as saying.
Part of the reason for the success was a more than 50% jump in revenue thanks to an increase in passenger numbers.
“These figures highlight the airline’s remarkable performance over the year and provide encouraging signs of continued recovery within the air transportation sector. They also confirm the operational viability of the airline business and demonstrate that the management’s ongoing efforts to restore profitability are yielding positive results,” said Michael Joseph.
Kenya Airways, which is partly owned by the government, has had a troubled recent past with huge debts and it was hit hard by the fallout from the Covid pandemic.
