high flyers
from his first-floor office at the headquarters of Kenya Airways, Hawkins Musili has a bird’s-eye view of the huge plane maintenance hangar below. A Boeing 787 Dreamliner is undergoing routine maintenance. The engines rev loudly, and we strain to hear each other
The sound of jet engines is familiar to Musili’s ears. The head of engineering at the airline has heard these sounds for the last 12 years. Disassembling and reassembling the engines has become second nature. Today, however, Musili’s ears are getting used to a new sound – the buzz of drones – following the airline’s love affair with unmanned aerial systems (UAS). Musili is among the airline’s technical staff who are spearheading Fahari Aviation, the airline’s fully owned subsidiary and a pacesetter in drone technology in Kenya.
KQ’S UPW ARDLY MOBILE NEW BABY
Fahari Aviation was incorporated in late 2020 at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic – the most unlikely period for setting up a new business segment. Kenya Airways, like other global airlines, needed to think outside the box and create new activities away from its core mandate.
“As our planes went into ‘hibernation’ last year, there was a need to de-risk the industry,” states Musili. “At KQ, we were asking ourselves, ‘how can we create new revenue streams and mitigate the effects of the low business in civil aviation?’ The answer was in creating a new business segment to take advantage of the fledgling UAS sector.”
Coming from an engineering background, Musili has
