Revealed: Why President’s plane returned to Nairobi

President Uhuru Kenyatta is bade farewell by General Samson Mwathethe, the Chief of Defence Forces designate and the outgoing Chief of Defence Force, General Julius Karangi at JKIA shortly before leaving to attend the 2015 Milken Global Conference in the US. PSCU

What you need to know:

  • Already, part of the Presidential entourage including Cabinet secretaries Fred Matiang’i and Amina Mohammed are in the US. They were in mid-journey when the President returned home.
  • The Sunday Nation has, however, established that Yemen, which closed its airspace on March 25 due to a Saudi Arabian-led coalition aerial bombing campaign against Houtthi Shiite rebels in support of the country’s embattled leader Abedrabbo Mansour, has since reopened a section of it to airlines.
  • A retired Kenya Air Force officer has told the Sunday Nation that travel by the Head of State is meticulously planned beforehand and coordinated between the military and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The unprecedented cancellation of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s trip to the US on Thursday night may have been caused by bungled planning that forced the abrupt return home of the Head of State.

Sources familiar with the cancellation said that the necessary clearances to overfly air space in a neighbouring country may not have been sought.

The sources said when the President’s plane entered the foreign airspace, the air controllers were taken aback and opened communication with the aircraft.

It is not clear what transpired in the communication but soon after the President’s jet was making a U-turn for Nairobi.

The fact that the presidential jet is a military aircraft seemed to have complicated the situation, the source added.

State House was tight-lipped on the saga save for Friday’s terse statements announcing the return of the President and that he would not be making the trip.
Other sources attributed the debacle to the long-standing territorial dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea while the official State House version blamed the sudden turn-around on “heightened military activity in Yemen”.

The President was travelling to Dubai using his official jet on Thursday where he was supposed to connect to Los Angeles, US, by a commercial flight.
The explanation offered by the official communication channel appeared baffling because the war in Yemen has been ongoing for the last two months and the authorities in the troubled country reopened the airspace last week after a three-week closure.

Indeed a Kenya Airways flight to Dubai which left JKIA 15 minutes after the President’s jet made it safely to destination.

Yesterday, tough questions were being asked at top levels of government with those who sanctioned the flight and protocol people appearing to be on the spot.

“People will be called to account,” the source said.

“The situation is tense and nobody knows what might happen next.”

The Kenya Government has been fully aware of the war situation in Yemen and has been actively evacuating Kenyans living and working in that country, with some of those rescued from the conflict having arrived in Nairobi by air only last weekend.

PLANNED BEFOREHAND

A retired Kenya Air Force officer has told the Sunday Nation that travel by the Head of State is meticulously planned beforehand and coordinated between the military and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Colonel (rtd) Eutychus Waithaka, a pilot who has worked for the squadron that handles VIP travel in the military, said that before a decision to make a trip is made another unit, the Military Intelligence Unit, has to survey the route in advance for any danger the Commander in Chief may face.

This rules out the possibility that the team that handled President Kenyatta’s travel had no prior information about the situation in Yemen.

“The intelligence unit works in a similar way to the National Intelligence Service (NIS) but for national defence purposes or in times of war,” said Col Waithaka.

“Intelligence does a report which is handed to the Air Force Commander who then makes a decision whether the trip can be made,” he said.

According to the retired officer, the President’s plane may have returned because of a diplomatic lapse or failure to follow the strict procedures demanded for military VIP travel.

“Flights by the President’s plane require strict coordination between the military and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as he is a diplomat,” he said.

The President’s official jet, a Fokker 70, medium range jetliner, is managed by the VIP squadron of the Kenya Air Force. As Commander in Chief, whenever he is travelling by air within or outside the country, all the logistics are handled by this particular unit.

“The President’s plane does not have a flight code since it is not a scheduled flight. However, when planning, the ministry must get an Aeronautical Information Publication (AIP) clearance from all the countries the flight will pass through,” he said.

The AIP and itinerary is then passed to the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority which keys it into the international flight path management system. This enables route controllers to give it special separations from other aircraft while in the sky.

The President, who was travelling to Dubai using his official jet on Thursday where he was supposed to connect to Los Angeles, US, using a commercial flight, made a U- turn for Nairobi after covering almost half of the distance, citing navigation concerns.

The Sunday Nation has, however, established that Yemen, which closed its airspace on March 25 due to a Saudi Arabian-led coalition aerial bombing campaign against Houtthi Shiite rebels in support of the country’s embattled leader Abedrabbo Mansour, has since reopened a section of it to airlines.

The mystery about the aborted trip has deepened since commercial flights between Dubai and Nairobi have continued including on the night that President Kenyatta returned home following the aborted trip.

International civil aviation experts say that given the time that President Kenyatta landed back at JKIA – 11.42 p.m. – it is highly likely that the jet made a U-turn in Ethiopian airspace.

The communications team told the media that the President was to travel to Dubai in the official jet and then board a commercial Emirates flight to Los Angeles.

Sources say that the Ethiopian Government had made contact with Nairobi over the aborted trip – which is unprecedented in Kenya’s international presidential travel. Sources said that Addis Ababa had dispatched a top official to Nairobi over the matter.

ALREADY IN THE US

Already, part of the Presidential entourage including Cabinet secretaries Fred Matiang’i and Amina Mohammed are in the US. They were in mid-journey when the President returned home.

According to the Presidential Strategic Communication Unit, the President and his entourage had departed JKIA shortly before 7 p.m. on Thursday evening. It means that the jet was airborne for about four hours and 42 minutes.

National carrier Kenya Airways, which operates daily flights to Dubai, has confirmed that for the last one week it has been flying over the war-torn country including one that departed just 15 minutes after the President’s jet.

“Airlines have been cleared to use the airspace once again which we have been doing for the last one week, cutting the flight time by two hours,” KQ’s Corporate Affairs Manager Wanjiku Mugo said.

Four other flights, three by Emirates and another one by KQ, left Jomo Kenyatta International Airport for Dubai on the same day and no incidents have been reported.

Under the Chicago Convention signed in 1944, each country is responsible for assessing civil aviation conflict zone risks in their territories, and for making that information promptly available to other states and airlines.

However, since the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight M17 in Ukraine last year, the International Civil Aviation Authority, a specialised UN agency tasked with coordinating and regulating international air travel, set stricter rules with regard to flying over conflict zones.

This included the creation of Fail Safe channels that make it mandatory for each state to make available to civil aviation authorities secured website. The website is accessible by all civil aviation authorities.

The Kenya Civil Aviation Authority registers all the flight plans of all aircraft leaving the country on this website for them to be cleared by air traffic control at JKIA.

Sources at KCAA say the President’s flight was registered and cleared before taking off for Dubai.