Kenya Airways pilots and other employees will have to wait longer to get their November salaries after the strike hit sales.
The delay will affect over 3,500 employees on the national carrier’s payroll.
The airline’s chief people officer, Tom Shivo notified workers on Wednesday, November 16, about the salary delays explaining why their pay will be deferred.
The Employment and Labour Relations Court ordered the pilots’ union KALPA to return to work, directing KQ management to shelve penalties.
The strike grounded operations leading to about 56 cancelled flights that saw the airline resort to stranded passenger accommodation
The debt-ridden carrier made an estimated loss of about KSh 300 million per day, summing up to KSh 1.2 billion for the four days. It was not the first time KQ delayed salaries.
In December 2021, Kenya Airways’s boss Kilavuka said the national carrier could not pay its pilots their full salaries because of the economic crunch caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
KQ recorded a KSh 9.9 billion loss in the first half of 2022. This was an improvement from the KSh 11.5 billion it registered in a similar period in 2021.
The airline said the loss was attributed to high fuel costs, which saw it spend KSh 11 billion during the first six months of the year.
The company’s expenditure on fuel pushed its operational costs to KSh 57 billion, KSh 1 billion more than it spent in 2017, a five-year high.