The governments of Kenya and Tanzania accuse the company of spreading ‘baseless’ claims of ‘civil unrest’ on purpose.
The governments of Kenya and Tanzania have criticized KLM for spreading “baseless” claims after the airline issued an advisory warning about travel disruption due to purported civil unrest in the country. two countries.
The airline has said that “civil unrest” from Friday to Monday is likely to force flights to be cancelled, before amending its warning to refer to an “unknown local threat”. in Tanzania”.
Kenya’s Transport Minister Kipchumba Murkomen said on Saturday that he was protesting the airline over “baseless, untrue, insensitive and misleading information that has caused Kenya to be smeared”.
“We will escalate this discussion through diplomatic channels,” he warned in a statement.
My statement on KLM’s false claims about civil unrest in Kenya. pic.twitter.com/10hbqsJK9C
– KIPCHUMBA MURKOMEN, EGH (@kipmurkomen) January 28, 2023
The Tanzanian government also criticized the advice, with Minister of Works and Transport Makame Mbarawa saying those claims were untrue.
“This claim is baseless, alarming, baseless, inconsiderate and insensitive, and causes unnecessary fear and panic,” he said in a statement. urge visitors to ignore the advice.
The Air France-KLM-owned airline apologized to the Kenyan government on Saturday, saying the advice was “only for our customers in Tanzania”.
However, the warning “was also mistakenly shared with our customers in Kenya”, it said.
Air France-KLM has a 7.8% stake in Kenya’s national airline, Kenya Airways, with the government owning 48.9%.
Meanwhile, Kenyans on social media have called for Nairobi to take action against the airline.
Because @KLMbad will, @CAA_Kenya and its counterpart in Tanzania @officialcaa suspended KLM’s right to land in two countries for 14 days and fined $1 million.
– Ahmednasir Abdullahi SC (@ahmednasirlaw) January 28, 2023
KLM’s right to land must be suspended indefinitely as soon as possible until they publicly apologize for their false claims of civil unrest in Kenya. https://t.co/smPa50xnQe
– Fadhil (@Fadhilow) January 28, 2023
