Fly540
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| Founded | 2006 | ||||||
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| Hubs | Jomo Kenyatta International Airport | ||||||
| Fleet size | 5 | ||||||
| Destinations | 10 | ||||||
| Company slogan | Your Local Airline | ||||||
| Headquarters | Nairobi, Kenya | ||||||
| Key people | Don Smith (CEO) Neil Steffen (COO) |
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| Website | fly540.com | ||||||
Five Forty Aviation Ltd, trading as Fly540, is a low-cost airline which commenced operations in 2006 and is based in Nairobi, Kenya, that operates domestic and international passenger and freight services. The airline had two subsidiary airlines, Fly540 Ghana (suspended in May 2014 and since sold) and Fly540 Angola (suspended in May 2014), but has since focused its business expansion plans on East Africa.
Fly540 started operations between Nairobi and Mombasa on November 24, 2006. The service initially operated twice daily using 48-seat ATR 42 aircraft. The airline's name refers to its price of Sh5,540 per adult return fare between the above-mentioned cities.
Lonrho Africa was a major investor in the company, paying US $1.5 million for a 49% stake.
In May 2007 the airline introduced two de Havilland Canada Dash 8-100 aircraft to increase the airline's capacity, allowing it to develop new domestic routes. Passenger numbers rose by 93% to 171,160 in the year ended 30 September 2008, from 88,571 in 2007. At the same time, the load factor amounted to 63%, down from 65.8% in 2007.
The original scheduled flights included freight and passenger services between Nairobi and Mombasa, while Kisumu became a destination in January 2007. Daily flights on the Nairobi-Malindi-Lamu route were added to its domestic services in February 2007.
International operations commenced in October 2007 with flights to Juba in South Sudan and Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo;Entebbe in Uganda was added in February 2008. It was planned to expand the Nairobi hub's destinations to Rwanda, Mozambique and Burundi in 2009. The company's ambition was to become a pan-African carrier, through an expansion to an additional two regional hubs:
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