Afrigather 
A Nairobi court docket has ordered placing Kenya Airways pilots to return to work by Wednesday morning after the days-long walkout pressured dozens of flight cancellations and left 1000’s of passengers stranded.
The Kenya Airline Pilots Affiliation (KALPA) launched the strike at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta Worldwide Airport on Saturday, defying a court docket order issued final week towards the commercial motion.
Justice Anna Mwaure on Tuesday ordered “the Kenya Airways pilots to renew their duties as pilots by 6:00 am on ninth November 2022 unconditionally”.
The walkout has exacerbated the woes going through the troubled nationwide service, which has been operating losses for years, regardless of the federal government pumping in tens of millions of {dollars} to maintain it afloat.
There was no speedy response from KALPA to the court docket order, which got here because the airline introduced that almost all of its flights had been cancelled because of the strike.
The service on Monday introduced that it was ending its recognition of the union and withdrawing from their collective bargaining deal, accusing KALPA of “exposing the airline to irreparable harm”.
Mwaure stated the court docket would now contemplate the difficulty and ordered the airline’s administration to permit the pilots “to carry out their duties with out harassing them or intimidating them and particularly by not taking any disciplinary motion towards any of them”.
The airline, which is a component owned by the federal government in addition to Air France-KLM, is likely one of the largest in Africa, connecting a number of international locations to Europe and Asia.
On Sunday, the airline stated 56 flights had been cancelled because of the strike, disrupting 12,000 passengers’ plans.
The protesting pilots, who make up 10 p.c of the workforce, are urgent for the reinstatement of contributions to a provident fund and cost of all salaries stopped through the Covid-19 pandemic.
The service has warned that the strike would jeopardise its restoration, estimating losses at $2.5 million per day.
