Pilot typifies the leadership KQ badly needs

It is extremely rare to come across anyone with something positive to say about Kenya Airways these days.

From delayed flights to missing luggage, unhappy passengers tend to take to social media to rant about their experiences on KQ flights.

But Pauline Ngimwa, an NGO executive and a frequent flyer, is full of praise for the crew of a KQ flight from Cape Town to Nairobi last week.

In Pauline’s recollection, they were up in the air for between 20 and 30 minutes past the scheduled landing time.

All the while the pilot, a man aptly named Moses, kept updating the passengers about the situation and reassuring them of safe landing.

But Moses didn’t stop at calming the passengers’ nerves in the aviation wilderness.

Upon landing, he joined the cabin crew at the door to usher the passengers out of the plane and personally hailed a bus to take them to town.

The plane had some difficulty landing at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, sending the passengers into panic.

“I am so pleased because in all my travels over the years, I have never engaged with pilots. The best I have got is incoherent, hard-to-understand announcements. So this was special.

I even engaged him briefly and he had the patience to listen to me and explain where he had taken us for about 20-30 minutes as we waited up in the air. We only need a couple more to redeem our favourite airline,” says Pauline.

At face value, the pilot’s act may appear to be a routine customer relations exercise.

Yet it was a demonstration of leadership and responsibility that should show the management and staff exactly what they need to be doing 24 hours a day to restore public confidence in the national carrier.

KQ’s biggest problem currently is neither the billions of shillings it is reporting in losses nor the heavy debt owed to a consortium of local banks.

Experts have pointed to well-documented evidence showing that such financial struggles are common with national airlines trying to navigate the turbulent flight path between public and private interests.

The overriding public interest in KQ has prompted the authorities to consider yet another rescue plan, which could see it nationalised.

But that effort will still not amount to much if the airline doesn’t address the public confidence crisis that has made passengers vote with their wallets to rival airlines in recent years.

The common narrative is that KQ is an unreliable and uncaring airline that delays flights, retains luggage thieves on its staff, serves bad food and doesn’t address passenger complaints promptly.

Pauline’s enthusiasm to share whatever positive experience she has on a KQ flight suggests there are still many flyers out there who just won’t give up on the national carrier yet.

But KQ needs more leaders like Moses on its staff to retain the loyal passengers and win the deserters back.