Kenya Airways: Whenever do politicians get it right?

The word “novices” if not “amateurs” comes to mind when reading sections of the report on the Kenya Airways inquiry compiled by the Kenyan Senate, considering some glaring inconsistencies if not fundamental misconceptions about how a business is run and how the various departments interact with each other.

The main point of argument here is that the functions of a commercial department and the functions of a marketing department are fundamentally different and encompass widely divergent objectives and tasks, something apparently lost on the Senators who compiled the report.

Marketing is in any business school described as communicating the value of one’s brand and products to customers and consumers with the aim of promoting those brands and products and creating demand. More detailed definitions can be easily looked up via Google but nowhere is it mentioned, as the Senate report wants readers to believe, that the function of marketing is actually selling tickets and being responsible for revenues, which clearly is the responsibility of the Commercial Department. In fact, Kenya Airways’ marketing has been nothing short but aggressive across all the destination markets including Kenya and if any recommendation should have been made it would be to increase the marketing budget to aim even higher instead of asking for a change at the helm of that department. Perhaps it eluded the Senators that Kenya Airways had bagged several continental and global airline awards in recent years, has taken up the responsibility to sponsor the Kenyan Rugby 7’s, the East African Classic Safari Rally and many more sporting events which helped the country in promoting the destination, besides the just the airline. The marketing department was largely responsible to initiate an MoU with the Kenya Tourism Board to extend broad support to destination marketing and join hands with their limited resources to put Kenya once again on the map of preferred destinations in Eastern Africa.

In fact the hate campaign on sections of the social media needs more active countering, to shut down unpatriotic elements who, while happily tearing down the image of the airline only play into the hands of KQ’s nearest competitors further north where not ever could such comments appear on Facebook or Twitter.

Several regular commentators since yesterday have almost instantly taken exception to such grave errors though none was much surprised given past comments received. In those comments was the enquiry being compared with a kangaroo court, corporate witch hunts and ego trips with no added value vis a vis finding solutions of how the national airline of Kenya can restore financial prudence and recover the losses of past years.

The local media then also added their own mischief when mistakenly reporting that Kenya Airways’ Commercial Director Gerard Clarke stepped down under the pressure of the enquiry or to escape the looming sack. Gerard, well known to this correspondent, had already in September given indication that he needed to return to Europe on purely personal grounds which in October than in fact resulted in him tendering his resignation from the airline way before his contract was up. Turning him into a fall guy now is a see through ploy by some to perhaps deflect attention from themselves and heap it on to someone who has left the airline and for all practical purposes cannot defend himself any longer as only an incumbent could. That said are ticket sales and pricing of course the function of a commercial department and it cannot be denied that Gerard’s term of office lacked those quintessential good fortunes. Largely external developments added to the airline’s woes, such as rabid anti travel advisories by Western countries effectively leading to a collapse in passenger demand from some European destinations and the Ebola outbreak in West Africa then compounded the challenges.

As often does success have many fathers and failure is an orphan but it is obvious that hidden agendas are and have been at work to bash the airline over the head and delivery low punches.

This is by no means a justification or beautification of the very serious losses which occurred over the past years but simply to put one or two records straight and create a better understanding of whom not to blame for the situation the airline is in. Again, the fact that only one airline in the top five in Africa made a profit last year with some other national carriers making even worse losses than Kenya Airways, can only serve as added information and to shed light to the situation while not mitigating the scale of the challenges for KQ.

It is understood that a new Commercial Director is already being recruited and as previously reported here has McKinsay Consulting also submitted a range of proposals to the Board and top management of Kenya Airways how to return the airline to profitability.

That report, with due respect, is rather more of substance and relevant for the airline and even its key shareholders than the politically motivated utterances of some Senate committee which in comparison has failed the test and in a game of snakes and ladders would be relegated to the third sub-basement to start over again.