Boeing 787s Will Finally Be Ungrounded

Brighter days appear to be finally ahead for long-grounded Boeing 787s at Kenya Airways, with a saga coming to an end involving engines and their supply.

The African carrier is reportedly set to welcome back its grounded Dreamliners after a disruption that stretched into 2025, with the widebodies to be complemented by the return of three Embraer regional jets.

The planned return of these aircraft is thanks to the long-delayed engines finally arriving, allowing fleet restoration to take meaningful steps after persistent delays.

Birth Of The Boeing 787 Woes

Kenya Airways has nine Boeing 787-8s to its name; these aircraft form the backbone of the airline’s long-haul network, centred on Nairobi, with their efficient operation pivotal to keeping costs low and improving margins.

In early 2025, data showed that 5Y-KZA, which was the first 787 delivered, had been parked in Nairobi. Then, 5Y-KZC and 5Y-KZH had also been parked due to challenges in maintaining the aircraft.

With unscheduled shop visits, engines around the world were impacted, with airlines experiencing varying degrees of hurt depending on whether their engines were affected and how many planes they had in their fleet.

What was initially expected to be routine maintenance quickly ballooned into a prolonged outage. As global shortages of spare engines and parts to fix existing ones became a problem, jets for Kenya Airways began to sit idle for weeks with no progress on their repairs.

Weeks turned into months, and then into years. Where significant flight disruption became not just a concern but a reality, as Dreamliners, key to long-haul flying, remained grounded, the airline was unable to offer its network to the same standard it had hoped for.

Unfortunately, in 2025, things worsened, and a third of its Dreamliner fleet was parked. With the grounding, the business scrambled to secure repair slots at shops, and the damage was setting in, with passenger revenue one of the biggest concerns.

Kenya Airways Hurt Maybe More Than Others

As with any aircraft grounding or delay in new aircraft delivery, the impact on airlines will vary. For a global mega-airline, the grounding of three jets may have a limited impact as cover could come in, but for Kenya Airways, it was crippling.

With a 33% reduction in long-haul capacity due to the Dreamliner groundings, the impact was felt across its operations. Some of its high-profile routes to Europe, Asia and even the Middle East were forced to see capacity slashed, or at times equipment shifts, if not that, then outright cancellations.

The airline then saw its operations at its Nairobi hub hurt, with connectivity slashed and passengers losing access to some of the most important markets on the network. Because of this, these passengers then turned towards rivals that were able to keep capacity and, if anything, scale it without the pressures on their fleet like Kenya Airways.

Financially, these groundings have hit, and with a bang. The deterioration of the finances caused by the grounding came just after; in 2024, it posted its first profit since 2017. The airline blamed the swing back to losses on reduced passenger numbers and lower revenue, thanks to the 787s being withdrawn from service.

Because of the smaller scale of the Kenya Airways widebody fleet, there is very little margin for error, and if a third of the 787s go out of action, the impact is profound. The airline was forced to perform surgery on its network, but it had no positive outcome.

Now that engines are returning, Kenya Airways is hopeful that its fleet will be restored by the end of the year. This is a more upbeat view after years of discomfort that’ll take some time to recover from. Fleet data show that 5Y-KZA remains parked; the same applies to 5Y-KZB and 5Y-KZD.