I’ve always loved Kenya Airways. Given an option, I’d pick KQ any day to travel anywhere, even after my latest experience. I see them (and our athletes) as Kenya’s gift to the world. But my guys have spectacularly dropped the ball and have been doing so for quite a while.
I hear terrible stories from friends and acquaintances about their travel experience with the Pride of Africa. Travelers are not even disappointed anymore, it’s like they expect it. A late flight, “Was it KQ? Of course it was!” “Did you lose your luggage on a direct flight? I bet it was KQ, right?”
Before this, it had never happened to me. I’m not what you’d call your frequent flyer but when I do travel and I can say mambo vipi to a voice from home in foreign skies, I feel a sense of great pride. I’ve always been treated with the utmost respect and kindness by the elegant ladies and gentlemen in red at 35,000 feet. Your uniform and hospitality brings me home 1,000 miles from home.
Recently, I traveled for work to a neighbouring country. At baggage claim, after waiting for more than two hours, watching bag after bag come through the conveyor belt, someone who barely spoke English at Bole International said, “That’s all the bags we have, go lodge a complaint over there!” He pointed to a desk in a corner next to the toilets.
In the line to get it on record, I was behind a fellow Kenyan who said this was the third time it was happening to her. She admonished herself for not carrying her essentials in her carry-on luggage but in her words, she’d given her country’s carrier, to her detriment, the benefit of doubt. Others laughed about it while in line, something they’re used to. I wonder why they still choose to fly KQ.
I was aboard KQ 402 on the evening of 10th May, had an uneventful flight but for a bit of turbulence, landing at Bole International a couple hours later, joined the immigration queue, small talk here and there and finally the long aforementioned wait at baggage claim.
I work with prescription glasses and a uniform but as we speak, I’ve just washed my sole pair of boxers, the only compression stocking I have (I have lymph oedema) and a pair of socks and a shirt my colleague was so kind to lend me. I’m wearing an extra pair of shoes he luckily brought. They pinch and I can barely walk in them. He’d checked in much earlier in the day. The trousers he offered were way above my ankles so I convinced another comrade to lend me a pair, they’re tight on the waist but they’ll have to do. My wet clothes are now hanging on the bamboo chair on the balcony at the Hilton, Addis Ababa. I also have a skin condition, my cream is in the bag that no one seems to know the location of.
And still, like I said, I’ll still be happy to board KQ, smile and say mambo vipi to a face from home back out for Nairobi a couple weeks from now.
What’s got my knickers in a twist (the only pair I have with me) is the fact that no one at KQ has felt bothered to say anything about where my luggage is or when I might get it. My boss here has called for days but nothing, the first time they said, “Maybe tomorrow” but now calls are not being picked.
At the complaints queue, personnel from a competing airline were the ones on hand to write a chit on a half-folded and hand sheared A4 sheet of printing paper with, you will get your luggage when you get it finality.
My case should be of concern to my carrier but hasn’t been. I wonder what happened to those on the same flight who were ten-fold more inconvenienced than I was (am) because like one of them said, their bag had perishables. Someone else’s bag may have had a suit they were to wear, documents they were to use in what they thought would be a killer pitch hours later but like me found themselves in track suit bottoms and flip-flops looking everywhere for the red regalia of home only to see blank faced, Amharic speaking, green clad staff who are more than likely to rub their hands with glee at the prospect of new business from a traveler scorned.
I don’t have 50,000 followers here so maybe this will only be seen by people close to me and probably go nowhere, no one at KQ will address this or even give it a second look. I’m never one to complain but I feel like I need to say something. And like Tom Keifer would say, you don’t know what you got till it’s gone.
