Kenya Airways plans to reduce operations in an exercise it says will be completed by September 30, according to an internal memo sent to staff and reported by Reuters.

The memo says the airline will lay off workers, reduce its network and also some assets due to the COVID-19 crisis.

Kenya Airways Chief Executive, Allan Kilavuka, said the airline’s “short- and medium-term projections indicate that [it] must inevitably reduce operations before beginning to scale up again”.

Marc Tooth, Kenya Airways’ Sales Manager for South Africa, confirmed that a network review was taking place.

He said: “Covid-19 has spared no airline locally or globally and its effects will still be felt for some time to come. All airlines have had to relook the routes that they operate on, and Kenya Airways is no different. We are still in the process of reviewing all the routes that we operate on and no final decision has been made to cut any routes as yet.”