NAIROBI, KENYA – 2022/07/27: A Kenya Airways plane seen parked at the parking bay of the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi. (Photo by John Ochieng/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

NAIROBI, Nov 3 (Reuters) – Scheduled Kenya Airways flights were taking off as planned on Thursday morning, hours after the expiry of a strike notice by the pilots union, an airline source and the union told Reuters.

KALPA, a union that represents more than 400 pilots at the carrier KQNA.NR, issued a notice that was set to trigger a strike at midnight on Wednesday, drawing the wrath of the airline’s management and board. Read full story

The pilots did not immediately start the strike, said Muriithi Nyaga, the general secretary of the union.

“We are still negotiating,” he told Reuters, adding that they were set to talk with government officials. The Kenyan government owns close to half of the airline.

If the strike had gone ahead, it would affect thousands of passengers and cost the airline 300 million shillings ($2.47 million) a day, Kenya Airways said this week.

($1 = 121.3500 Kenyan shillings)

(Reporting by Duncan Miriri; Editing by George Obulutsa and Tomasz Janowski)

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