The Kenyan Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) is considering capping the number of carriers that use Nairobi Jomo Kenyatta and Nairobi Wilson given rising problems with congestion at the airfields.
According to The East African, KCAA director-general Gilbert Kibe said the board was looking at barring new operators from using either airfield until infrastructural upgrades had been completed.
"Wilson Airport is seriously congested, JKIA is also becoming congested. We need new airport development to add taxiways and parking bays. There is no point of having so many operators coming in when our airport infrastructure cannot handle them efficiently," he told the Modern Airports International Conference in Nairobi this week.
"We should consider perhaps a moratorium on licensing of air services until the airport infrastructure can handle the increased traffic."
According to KCAA statistics, there are currently 41 airlines that use Nairobi Jomo Kenyatta. The airport, Kenya's primary gateway, last year recorded 207,831 domestic landings and takeoffs. However, despite the construction of a new passenger terminal and the addition of twenty more parking bays (for a total of 43), the airfield still only functions with a single runway, a serious bottleneck especially in the event of an incident.
It is recalled that President Uhuru Kenyatta’s government dropped plans to build a new Greenfield Terminal and a second runway in 2016 after failing to raise the requisite 15% deposit needed to unlock additional funding.
Had the KES56 billion shilling (USD555 million) project gone ahead, it would have seen the construction of a terminal with 50 international check-in counters, eight air bridges, 45 aircraft parking stands on linked apron space, and an additional runway.
For its part, Wilson, one of Africa's busiest general aviation airports, handles 350 movements per day from 200 operators. It, however, is forced to cope with just nine designated parking bays. There are also other bays spread in the 33 aircraft hangars.
