Jambojet (JM, Nairobi Jomo Kenyatta) is looking to replace its fleet of three B737-300s with newer B737-700s the carrier's Chief Executive Officer, Willem Hondius, has disclosed. In an interview with Kenya's African Business magazine, Hondius said the savings incurred from the new twinjets' fuel efficiency would far outweigh their leasing costs.
"The intention is to switch to next generation aircraft within a year," he said. "It made sense to use those older -300s at first. By doing that you lower your start-up risks."
Launched just six months ago, the Kenya Airways (KQ, Nairobi Jomo Kenyatta) subsidiary offers scheduled low-cost flights from its primary base, Nairobi Jomo Kenyatta, to Eldoret, Kisumu, and Mombasa where it eventually hopes to establish a second base. As JamboJet has moved into the domestic market, so Kenya Airways has gradually withdrawn from those routes in a bid to not only improve their profitability, but also to expose them to a new and largely untapped market, the first-time flyer.
In terms of the carrier's long term expansion goals, Hondius said that while the airline had been granted rights to serve 22 destinations both domestically and regionally, Jambojet would only consider starting international flights once its domestic operation had been consolidated.
"We are really concentrating on what we are doing now," he explained. "We will keep on doing these three routes for the first year, iron out any issues we have, see that we are stable, that we make money, and then we will expand to the region - destinations like Zanzibar, Dar es Salaam, Entebbe, Addis Ababa International."
Having seen strong growth potential in the market since launching in April this year, Hondius believes Jambojet could be operating a fleet of 10 aircraft by 2019, should current trends remain more or less consistent.
