By Grace Kuria
Kenya Airways recorded a pretax loss of Ksh36.57 billion in 2020, nearly triple the previous year’s loss of Ksh12.9 billion.
The airline announced on Tuesday that the huge loss was mainly due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The airline’s basic loss per share jumped to 6.22 shillings in 2020 from 2.23 shillings in the prior year, it said.
“Since the start of the year, coronavirus has devastated the aviation and travel market, causing consistent and severe capacity cuts week after week. Globally, overall capacity is down nearly 50 million seats which is over 47%.” the airline said.
Adding that March 2020, was the worst year in aviation history. “Airline passenger traffic reduced to levels last seen in 1999 resulting in 21 years of traffic growth being wiped out in just one year following the government directive to suspend all passenger services to curb the spread of Coronavirus.”
The airline said that it could take between 3 to 4 years for the carrier to recover to 2019 levels