Kenya Airways posted a pre-tax loss in the first half following a profit in the same period a year ago, as revenue and the number of passengers fell with some of its planes out of commission for maintenance, the airline said on Tuesday.

One of Africa’s three biggest airlines, Kenya Airways posted a loss of Ksh12.17 billion ($94.34 million) in the first half of this year, compared with Ksh634 million profit in the same period a year ago.

The pre-tax profit the airline posted in first half 2024 was the first the airline had made in over a decade.

Operating loss for the half-year was Ksh6.23 billion, down from a Ksh1.3 billion profit in first half 2024, while revenue fell to Ksh74.5 billion from Ksh91.5 billion in the first half of 2024.

Allan Kilavuka, its chief executive officer, told an investor briefing that one of the three aircraft that had been grounded for maintenance had resumed services in July. He said the aim was to have a full fleet available by next year.

Kenya Airways went into insolvency in 2018 after an expansion drive left it with hundreds of millions of dollars in debt.

The near-shutdown in international travel during the Covid-19 pandemic, combined with a weakening of the shilling over 2022-2023 and higher interest rates, made it more difficult to service that debt.

It has relied on state financial support, with the government paying off a loan of $150 million in January that the airline had received from local commercial banks.

The company ended 2024 with a full-year pre-tax profit of 5.53 billion shillings, compared with a loss of Ksh22.86 billion the year before.

A big driver of 2024 performance was foreign-exchange gains of Ksh10.55 billion versus a loss of 15.04 billion shillings in 2023, as the local currency strengthened more than 20 per cent against the dollar that year.

($1 = 129.0000 Kenyan shillings)

• A Reuters report