Roundup: Kenyan pilots finally call off strike

Kenya Airways pilots on Friday called off their day-long strike that paralyzed the airline operations in the country.

The Kenya Airline Pilots Association (Kalpa), which represents about 500 pilots, downed their tools on Thursday in protest of alleged mismanagement on the part of Kenya Airways, one of the largest carriers in Africa.

However, the pilots said they are now set to resume work on Friday, after the airline canceled all but two of its evening flights to the coastal city of Mombasa due to disruptions.

The deadlock was however unlocked on Thursday night after the board announced management changes to calm down the pilots.

"Following further consultations held today, KALPA and Kenya Airways, with the intervention of the Cabinet Sub-Committee on Kenya Airways, have reached an agreement that will see management changes effected immediately at Kenya Airways," KALPA Secretary General Paul Gichangi said in a statement on Friday.

"Based on this, KALPA would like to notify all stakeholders of Kenya Airways and Kenyans at large, that it has called off the pilots' strike, which took effect from 12:00hrs of Thursday," Gichangi said.

The pilots resolved to call off the strike after the airline announced that Alban Mwendar, the airline's group Human Resource Director since August 2011, has left the company.

Mwendar had been asked to stay on at the airline to oversee the staff rationalization program expected to see 600 employees leave the airline.

Sources said flight operations director and Safety Director have been sent on compulsory leave as part of the deal to get pilots get back to work.

"We wish to assure the public that from Friday until the end of the deliberations with Kenya Airways management on June 1, KALPA will crew all flights and extend goodwill to ensure that services operate optimally," Gichangi said.

The strike by the pilots disrupted Kenya Airways operations at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport hub on Thursday, causing heavy revenue losses and inconvenience to passengers who were due to fly to different parts of the world.

The airline's flights to Dar es Salaam, Kilimanjaro, Lusaka and Zanzibar including Johannesburg, Yaounde, Jeddah, Entebbe, Addis Ababa and Kinshasa were among those cancelled.

Kenya Airways, once the most successful airlines in Africa, has been relying heavily on debt to finance its operations following the launch of its overly-ambitious 10-year resource-draining expansion plan dubbed Project Mawingu.

The carrier has been recording reduced profits and high costs of operations for the last four years.

The airline early this year also declared 600 of its workers redundant in a bid to recover 20 million dollars, a move that the association highly condemned. Endit