Jambojet has apologised to thousands of holidaymakers who were stranded for three days at various airports after its flights to various holiday destinations in the Coast region were delayed and cancelled at the eleventh hour.
In a statement, Jambojet customer service manager Mary Mwangi said the carrier’s existing smaller aircraft could not accommodate the high volume of booked passengers.
“We apologize to all concerned for the unpleasant nature of this entire experience and assure all that we are doing our utmost to resolve the issue as soon as possible,” said Ms Mwangi.
She added: “We, at Jambojet, have had some unexpected technical challenges on our Q400 fleet that operates most of our coastal routes. Additionally, the delivery of our newly leased aircraft initially scheduled for introduction during the peak season was delayed due to unforeseen circumstances and will only be delivered in early 2017,”.
“As a result of the combination of these factors as well as the unavailability of aircraft of the same capacity, we have had to reschedule flights and carry passengers on smaller aircraft. This being high season, we have a high volume of booked passengers all of whom cannot be accommodated on these smaller aircraft,”
“We have therefore [endeavoured] to fly more frequencies with these smaller capacity aircraft and also re-route remaining passengers via Mombasa and put other passengers on Kenya Airways flights, where seats are available, to get them to their destinations,”
The Kenya Airways-owned firm booked the stranded passengers in some of hotels in Malindi town before putting them on early morning flights on Wednesday and Thursday.