Korean Air pilots celebrate a strial flight to Kenya with traditional dancers on landing in Nairobi in January.(Hanjin Group)

First Korea-Kenya air link can give wings to business, tourism


The first chartered flight from Kenya to Korea shall be a “breakthrough” for tourism and trade, the Kenyan ambassador has said.

The flight set to start this summer will allow travelers to make the trip between the two countries in under 14 hours, according to Kenyan ambassador Ngovi Kitau.

The Korean Air flight will cut out a 10-hour stopover in Thailand that has hampered convenient travel between Incheon and Nairobi until now.

Details of the new flight, such as what size of plane will run, are still being hammered out. But Korean Air owner Hanjin aims to aims to schedule the flight three times a week from June 21 this year, so that the first passengers can take in the great wildebeest migration at Kenya’s Masai Mara game reserve in July.

“In the future people will come from China and Japan to Korea to fly to Africa. They will be able to get to Ethiopia, Uganda and the surrounding countries once they fly to Nairobi,” Kitau said. “Seoul is becoming a hub for free trade and Nairobi is the financial services hub for East Africa. A flight linking the two will be a huge benefit.”

Kitau said that the flight will help Korean companies such as POSCO and Kia, who already have investments there, to take advantage of Kenya’s developing infrastructure.

The country aims to open a second port north of Mombasa, with a new far-reaching highway, railway and oil pipelines linking to the surrounding region.

The transport corridor comprised of 880 kilometers of road and a 1,700-kilometer railway will stretch into Ethiopia and South Sudan, with plans to ultimately run across the continent to Cameroon.

“Korean Air has already seen that potential and they are moving in,” he said. “There are a lot of business opportunities, but transport has been the main barrier, especially for SMEs. The Korean business community could not come to Kenya easily. They don’t want to spend so many hours waiting at the airport (for a connecting flight).”

When POSCO’s chairman visited Kenya last year, he had to charter his own flight to the country to avoid the long wait in Bangkok.

Although bilateral trade had grown since he became Kenya’s first ambassador to Korea in 2009, Kitau said growing imports and investments had been shackled by a lack of easy travel between the countries.

“We had done all we can do with the current situation. That flight is a breakthrough. Now we can have more tourists and investors,” he said.

And he thought that a diplomatic presence in Korea was becoming essential for many African countries.

“The biggest challenge is that everybody is going toward economic diplomacy now,” he said. “There are only two important things now and those are trade and tourism.

“This has been the situation in Korea for a very long time, but African countries have run their Korean diplomacy from Japan.

“In 2007, Kenya opened a chancery here, but we never posted an ambassador. In December 2009, I came to find out what was happening here. From then on business tripled.”

Since then, Kenyan imports to Korea tripled from $5.57 million in 2009 to $17.65 million last year, he said.

Also helping this trade boost, Korean consumption of Kenyan coffee has more than doubled since 2009. Ngovi explained that when he first came here, Koreans were buying 1 kg of coffee for $20. But by helping buyers here purchase from the farmers or cooperatives directly, the price has dropped to $10.

Kitau now has a target of attracting 10,000 Korean tourists to his country in 2012. Even though the annual figure has not passed 7,000 before, he is convinced that the new flight will encourage people to flock from here as well as from China and Japan.

Two trial flights in January have already brought 330 people to Nairobi, who then went on to go on safari in Tanzania, or visit South Africa and other parts of Kenya.

“That is the good thing about this flight,” Ngovi said. “They won’t just go to Kenya, they can go on to other African destinations. People coming from China and Japan could pass through Korea as some kind of package deal,” he said.

One Korean passenger who took the trial flight to the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport said: “The direct flight to Africa was really convenient and comfortable.

“I am very impressed by the fact that we could experience wildlife that we had only watched on TV. We also enjoyed the warm weather of the equator.”

By Kirsty Taylor (kirstyt@heraldcorp.com)