Kenya Airways to restart hedging to counter oil price volatility

Kenya Airways’ immediate biggest challenge is oil price volatility, and the airline will restart price hedging, its chief executive officer said on Friday.

“The volatility of the oil price has been really tremendous. Addressing this is of utmost concern,” Sebastian Mikosz told a news conference after the company’s annual meeting.

The airline had stopped fuel hedging after it was blamed for massive losses during the years the carrier went through a slump and a financial crisis.

Mikosz said they were already discussing with banks and trading houses to restart the hedging.

“We are in the technical phase of restarting it,” he said.

In March, it reported a nine-month pretax loss of 5.97 billion shillings ($59 million) and an after tax loss of 6.1 billion shillings, hurt by a prolonged election period in the country and rising fuel prices.