Kenyan Airways domestic traffic upbeat

Passengers carried by Kenyan Airways on its domestic routes rose 35 percent during the past holiday season on the back of increased flights and a new route, the airline said on Friday. The carrier, which is 26 percent owned by Air France-KLM, in October estimated it would carry 3 million passengers in the year to March 2011, up from 2.7 million a year earlier. It said cargo hauled would rise to 60,000 tonnes in the same period from 57,700 in 2009. Although the airline's strategy hinges on linking Africa to the world through its Nairobi hub, domestic passengers are an important part of its business. It serves the western city of Kisumu and the coast. Soaring demand for travel to the coastal city of Mombasa by holiday-makers led to an increase in the frequency of daily flights to 10 from seven, rising to 16 flights in the run-up to Christmas, Kenya Airways said. Total domestics flights during the period jumped 84 percent, the airline said in a statement, adding a new service to the resort town of Malindi on the north coast had also contributed to the rise in passengers flown.

Pilot error cause for the 2007 Cameroon crash

Investigators have found the probable cause for the May 2007 crash of a Kenyan Airways B737 in Cameroon. The aircraft with 114 passengers on board crashed on a stormy night just after take off from Douala en route to Nairobi. The investigation team has ruled that the aircraft crashed due to loss of control of the crew due to spatial orientation. The report said that the after a long slow roll during which no instrument scanning was done by the crew and with no external visual reference in a dark night the aircraft crashed. The report said that the crew had failed to notice that the aircraft was banking slowly to the right as it gained altitude and just as the alarm sounded to warn the crew the Captain grabbed the controls and made erratic movements of the control column, putting the aircraft into a steeper bank of more than 90 degrees. The CVR had the final moments of the cockpit in which the first officer was calling 'left left captain' as it just hit the ground.