Kenya’s national carrier Kenya Airways cancelled several flights and delayed several others on Sunday after outsourced workers downed tools.
The national carrier said in a statement staff had stayed away from work since Friday due to issues with their employer.
“Some of our outsourced staff, including cabin crew, have stayed away from work from Friday and we are working with their employer to resolve any issues they may have,” the statement said.
Career Directions Limited is the company that manages the airline’s outsourced employees. They employees are demanding equal pay with in-house staff.
The statement said passengers booked on the affected flights would be rebooked on other airlines. The flights affected were KQ600 to Mombasa, KQ432 to Kilimanjaro, KQ350 to Juba KQ706 to Lusaka/Harare, and KQ740 to Maputo. Flight KQ782 to Livingston/Cape Town was delayed.
In addition, the airline is once again facing a strike threat by members of the Kenya Airline Pilots Association (KALPA). The pilots have threatened to boycott work starting on Tuesday, despite a court order barring them from going on strike.
KALPA wants the airline’s board chairman Dennis Awori and CEO Mbuvi Ngunze to resign, as the pilots had no confidence in their ongoing turnaround strategy.
Apart from outsourcing staff, other cost cutting measures included subleasing and selling aircraft to Omni Air, Oman Air, and Turkish Airlines, which was done in May this year.
Kenya Airways has recently been experiencing labour and financial problems. In July, it announced a record KSh26.2 billion (about US260 million) net loss for the year ended March 2016. In 2015 the national carrier announced a revenue loss of KSh25.7 billion (about US257 million).
Late on Sunday, the airline issued a second short statement announcing that it had resumed normal operations and 67 flights had taken off to various destinations. It said all evening flights were expected to operate as planned.
All passengers who had been inconvenienced had been rebooked or given alternative routings. No details of the resumed flights were given. A short one sentence apology was made to affected passengers.