Jambojet returns to the regional by opening Goma in DRC today
Prior to the health crisis, Jambojet had started building its regional network by opening services to Entebbe (February 2018), Mogadishu (November 2018) and Kigali (November 2019). The low-cost subsidiary of Kenya Airways also offered flights to Bujumbura on behalf of its parent company. All these routes were suspended last year due to the pandemic.
From now on, the carrier will offer two flights per week, on Mondays and Fridays, between the Kenyan capital and the capital of the North Kivu province. Flight JM8540 will leave Jomo Kenyatta International Airport at 11.40am and arrive in Goma at 12.40pm. In the opposite direction, flight JM8541 will leave the Congolese soil at 13:40 and land in Nairobi at 16:40 local time. The route will be operated, without competition, with its homogeneous Dash8-400 fleet of six aircraft with an average age of 3.3 years.
As part of its expansion strategy, Jambojet is also targeting the Comoros Islands (Moroni), Ethiopia (Addis Ababa), Malawi (Lilongwe, Blantyre), DRC (Kisangani), Somalia (Mogadishu, Hargeisa), South Sudan (Juba) and Tanzania (Dar-es-Salaam, Kilimanjaro, Mwanza and Zanzibar). Applications have been made to the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) for a licence to do so in 2019.
Launched in April 2014, Jambojet has already carried more than 3 million passengers on its network, which also includes six domestic routes (Eldoret, Kisumu, Malindi, Mombasa, Nairobi and Ukunda). Its fleet comprises six Dash8-400s. Karanja Ndegwa was confirmed as chief executive officer this week, a position he had been acting in since May 2020 following the promotion of Allan Kilavuka as CEO of Kenya Airways Plc Group.
