More than 60 pilots quit national carrier Kenya Airways for greener pastures in rival Middle East airlines in the past year, the company’s management said. An undisclosed number of engineers have also left for better jobs as the Kenyan carrier struggles to dig itself out of a loss-making pit.

Kenya Airways – popularly known as KQ – had 523 pilots in March 2015 but that number dropped to 489 pilots in 2016, representing loss of about 30 pilots. Others have left in the current financial year. Mbuvi Ngunze, the Kenya Airways chief executive, said the number of pilots now stands at 460 and the number of engineers at 600.

He blamed the attrition to poaching of skilled staff by Middle East airlines, which are offering lucrative perks and salaries to the KQ’s highly trained specialists.

“It is true that there has been some increase in the numbers of engineers who have left KQ recently. We must bear in mind that the Middle East is looking for talent from all over the world because of the rapid growth. But it should be remembered that we had been training significantly as part of our growth so we have certain elements of back fill,” said Mr Ngunze during the airline’s 40th annual general meeting (AGM) held in Nairobi.

He played down impact of the human capital haemorrhage on the airline’s performance, insisting it has laid out contingency mitigation measures to fill any emerging gaps.

“We are looking to improve our own productivity, but also looking at our own initiatives in terms of how we retain people. We are not at a point where we are imbalanced but it represents a specific risk from a skills set point of view,” he said.

KQ’s broader turnaround plan includes staff retrenchment. Pilots and cabin crew have been among those earmarked for redundancy. The airline’s overall staff count dropped to 3,870 in the year ended March from 4,002 a year earlier, with further retrenchments having commenced from July.

Kenya Airways made a record net loss of Sh26.2 billion in the year ended March, widening the Sh25.7 billion net loss it made a year earlier. Read the full story.