Skyports and Kenya Airways to set up UAS operations in Africa, first delivery flights planned for later this year

Sky­ports has part­nered with Kenya Air­ways to launch per­ma­nent unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cle oper­a­tions in the coun­try, with the tar­get for the first drone deliv­ery flights planned for Q3/Q4 2021.

Both com­pa­nies will explore the com­mer­cial via­bil­i­ty of a vari­ety of med­ical, logis­ti­cal and inspec­tion use cas­es along­side Kenya’s lead­ing pub­lic and pri­vate insti­tu­tions. Joint efforts have already begun across drone deliv­ery and inspec­tion use cas­es.

Dun­can Walk­er, chief exec­u­tive offi­cer at Sky­ports, said: “Our part­ner­ship with Kenya Air­ways can unlock sig­nif­i­cant oppor­tu­ni­ties for drone deliv­er­ies and inspec­tions in Kenya. This will cre­ate time and cost sav­ings for our cus­tomers and con­tribute to the growth of the country’s tech and avi­a­tion ecosys­tem.

“This impor­tant part­ner­ship under­scores the growth poten­tial of Sky­ports’ tech-agnos­tic oper­a­tor approach as a flex­i­ble offer­ing which is suit­ed to vary­ing glob­al mar­ket require­ments. We look for­ward to work­ing with Kenya Air­ways and to fur­ther demon­strate the via­bil­i­ty of AAM in dif­fer­ent geo­gra­phies.”

This col­lab­o­ra­tion brings togeth­er Kenya Air­ways’ sig­nif­i­cant exper­tise in avi­a­tion ser­vices and Sky­ports’ drone deliv­ery logis­tics ser­vice – Deliv­ery by Sky­ports.

As a lead­ing air ser­vices provider in Africa, Kenya Air­ways seeks to lead the appli­ca­tion of drone tech­nol­o­gy in the region. This will see one of the con­ti­nen­t’s lead­ing air­lin­ers offer train­ing, oper­a­tions and traf­fic man­age­ment ser­vices through its whol­ly owned sub­sidiary, Fahari Avi­a­tion.

Fahari’s ini­tial focus will be appli­ca­tion of drone tech­nol­o­gy in the areas of train­ing, oper­a­tions and traf­fic man­age­ment with a view to grow into main­te­nance dis­tri­b­u­tion as well as design and pro­duc­tion of drones.

Allan Kilavu­ka, chief exec­u­tive offi­cer at Kenya Air­ways, said: “Align­ing with our pur­pose of the sus­tain­able devel­op­ment of Africa, this part­ner­ship with Sky­ports will sup­port our diver­si­fi­ca­tion plans in drone tech­nol­o­gy appli­ca­tion.

“This will give us access to avail­able equip­ment and estab­lished oper­a­tions that will lay the foun­da­tion for the Kenyan and region­al drone mar­ket through our drone and emerg­ing avi­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy sub­sidiary, Fahari Avi­a­tion.”

The lat­est news fol­lows on from Sky­ports announc­ing its part­ner­ship with Japan­ese trad­ing com­pa­ny Kane­mat­su, which will aim to accel­er­ate the intro­duc­tion of advanced air mobil­i­ty ser­vices and pas­sen­ger and car­go-car­ry­ing mis­sions in Japan.

It has obtained reg­u­la­to­ry approvals to fly the UK’s first BVLOS med­ical drone deliv­er­ies for the Nation­al Health Ser­vice (NHS), with oper­a­tions cur­rent­ly under way. Sim­i­lar­ly, Sky­ports oper­at­ed the UK Roy­al Mail’s first drone par­cel deliv­ery in Scot­land in Decem­ber 2020.