Kenyan national flag carrier Kenya Airways and major US carrier Delta Air Lines have announced that they have expanded and enhanced their codeshare agreement. As a result, Delta will be able to increase the number of African destinations that it can offer its passengers while Kenya Airways passengers will be able to access a greater number of cities in North America, via its US gateway of John F Kennedy International Airport (universally known just as JFK) in New York.
The two airlines are both members of the SkyTeam alliance. As a result of the improved agreement, passengers on the two carriers will now have seamless travel between 39 cities in Africa, Canada and the US.
“Delta is the leading US airline in Africa,” highlighted Delta executive VP and president: international Alain Bellemare. “Strengthening our partnership with Kenya Airways responds to customer demand for more travel choice between the continent and North America. These codeshare services will offer customers greater access to destinations in South, West and East Africa, rounding out Delta’s existing network of nonstop services to Accra, Dakar, Johannesburg and Lagos.”
“Kenya Airways and Delta Air Lines’ partnership remains central to our plans of offering the fastest connections to the Americas from our Nairobi hub and is in-line with our brand promise of enabling the sustainable development of Africa by providing access to different markets,” pointed out Kenya Airways chief customer and commercial officer Julius Thairu. (Of Kenya Airways’ 41 destinations, 34 are in Africa.)
For example, Delta passengers will be able to fly to Accra, Ghana, and then transfer on to Kenya Airways flights to Freetown, in Sierra Leone, or Monrovia, in Liberia, all on a Delta ticket. Likewise, Delta-ticketed customers will be able to fly to Nairobi and then transfer to flights to Cape Town, South Africa, Harare, in Zimbabwe, and Kigali, in Rwanda.
In return, Kenya Airways tickets will allow passengers to fly, via JFK, on Delta planes to Chicago, in the US state of Illinois, Denver, in Colorado, Miami and Orlando, both in Florida, Raleigh Durham and Charlotte, both in North Carolina, and Phoenix, in Arizona. These destinations are in addition to Washington DC and Indianapolis in Indiana, covered by the preceding codeshare agreement.