Investigation of capacity management Strategies: The case of Kenya Airways

Abstract

The Airline industry is experiencing substantial passengers and cargo growth, outstripping Airline capacity expansion (Bisignan, 2004). This has mainly been attributed by globalization and deregulation of the Airline industry encouraging world trade. The imbalance between the growth and capacity expansion is known to cause delays and sometimes flight cancellations increasing Airport congestions by frustrated travellers. This situation is getting worse, particularly in JUrica, where most connections for destinations within Africa have to be made through Europe making these flights very expensive and tiresome. It was in this realization that Kenya Airways, opted to expand its operations with an aim of being a dominant carrier in Africa while maintaining a large international network via alliances with Nairobi as its hub. Since Airlines tend to fly similar routes with similar services often matching prices (Dimitri et al, 2002), Kenya Airways opted to differentiate its operations by replacing its old fleet with 22 dominantly Boeing manufactured aircraft to serve more destinations through Nairobi(Kenya Airways, 2005). It is against this background, that it became necessary to establish Kenya Airways capacity management strategies for this expansion program. The objective was to establish strategies for enhancing operations efficiency at Kenya Airways and consequently challenges in the Airline Industry. Primary data was collected by way of survey questionnaires forming the basis of this study. Data was analysed by use of descriptive s~stics. The survey findings show that 56% of Kenya Airways operations have the right capacity which was achieved mainly by a radical change and benchmarking of its decentralized operations. T~e Airline placed a deliberate training program which produced flexible work teams to provide services through variable shifts to serve tightly scheduled in-transit flights. These operations are further integrated through Information Technology which provides a" platform for a rapidly growing E-Ticketing strategy. The study however, recommends further increase in capacity beyond the current level by addressing some of its shortfalls by hiring and training more technical and flight crew meant to improve the current low level of quality assurance and customer focus while sustaining a high level of safety and efficiency bound to deteriorate with time.