Kenya Airways inks maintenance deal with Dubai firm

Kenya Airways (KQ) #ticker:KQ has signed a plane maintenance deal with a Dubai-based firm for its Boeing 787 planes in a move aimed at improving the safety status of its aircraft.

The deal will see Joramco, the engineering arm of Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE), perform seven heavy checks and modifications of the planes between January and September next year.

“We are delighted to further extend our co-operation with Joramco having already inducted the B787 for Out of Phase checks earlier in August of 2019 as well as C checks on two of our B737-800 aircraft,” said outgoing Kenya Airways chief executive Sebastian Mikosz in a statement.

The checks are scheduled to start in 2020.

Joramco’s CEO, Jeff Wilkinson, said that firm’s “ongoing transformation” is attracting more customers from various regions across the globe.

Joramco also signed a similar agreement with Turkish carrier Corendon Airlinest for its four Boeing 737 NGs aircraft.

Separately, Kenya Airways pilots have been embroiled in a public war of words over a maintenance dispatch known as ‘Crew Concept’.

Under the crew concept, pilots were expected to undertake some safety checks that are ordinarily done by engineers.

Though their lobby — Kenya Airline Pilots Association (Kalpa) — the pilots had accused KQ of breaching maintenance rules in a row that looked set to cause flight cancellations and delays.

Among the safety checks that Kalpa accused KQ of breaching is the release of planes without engineers approving the flight security checklist.

The lobby argues that pilots were filling in receipt details of fuelling operations carried out by non-maintenance personnel, adding that the practice is exposing the pilots to litigation.