Flight operations+254 722 259 911Request a quote
Flight operations+254 722 259 911Request a quote

When the aid arrives by air, it's often on ours.

Scroll to take off

An aircraft cabin window, looking out over the wing

ALS is a Kenyan airline based at Wilson Airport, Nairobi. Since 1985 we've put aircraft, crews and engineers wherever the UN, the Red Cross, airlines and energy companies need them, across Africa and the Middle East.

ALS Limited

Kenyan airline since 1985

  • 1985

    One Cessna 150, leased to a flying school. It grew.

  • 34 aircraft

    Nine types, from the Cessna 172 to the Embraer jet.

  • 390+ people

    105 of them pilots.

  • 2011

    First general aviation company in Africa to pass IATA's safety audit, IOSA.

A sea of white cloud below an aircraft's wing

You've probably seen our aircraft. The paint said UN.

Most of what we do flies under someone else's name.

About 90% of ALS's work is ACMI: we lease an aircraft to a client with its crew, maintenance and insurance included, and fly it for them. The clients are the UN World Food Programme, UNHCR, the Red Cross, UN peacekeeping missions, airlines and oil companies, and the places run from Somalia to Western Sahara. The aircraft wears the client's colours. The pilots, engineers and spare parts are ours, and so is the phone call to Nairobi when something needs deciding.

Humanitarian & UN
The tail of a Dash 8 in UN World Food Programme colours outside the ALS hangar
WFP
A Dash 8 in Red Cross colours on a wet apron under an orange sky
ICRC
A Dash 8 in Fly ALS colours, reflected in a rain puddle on the apron
Fly ALS

What we do

All services
Scheduled flights: Fly ALSMasai Mara, Amboseli and Tsavo, by the seat.
An Embraer ERJ-145 in UN Humanitarian Air Service colours on a grass-edged apron

Humanitarian · UN World Food Programme

Nine countries. One client.

Four aircraft types in nine countries, from Chad to Somaliland, for the UN Humanitarian Air Service.

Read the case study
An ALS Embraer ERJ-145 on the apron, seen from the front

Humanitarian · UNHCR

The flight home.

When refugees choose to go home, UNHCR arranges the journey. We fly them: from Kenya to Somalia, and from Kenya to Burundi.

Read the case study
An Embraer ERJ-145 with United Nations titles outside the ALS hangar

Peacekeeping · United Nations

Five missions. Five acronyms. One operator.

UN missions need aircraft that turn up every day, whatever's happening on the ground, and an operator that passes the UN's own audits to fly them.

Read the case study
An ALS Embraer ERJ-145 outside the hangar under a low sun

Wet lease · Kenya Airways

An ALS jet with a KQ flight number.

Kenya's national airline needed extra regional capacity. We supplied an Embraer ERJ-145 LR, with ALS pilots, cabin crew and engineers, flying under Kenya Airways' KQ code.

Read the case study

Air Ambulance

Intensive care. Cruising at 37,000 feet.

Our Embraer ERJ-145 air ambulances fly from Wilson Airport with LifePort stretchers for two patients, a ventilator, monitors with a defibrillator, infusion pumps and oxygen, and an ICU team on board: doctors, anaesthetists, critical-care nurses and paramedics. The XR version has a range of about 3,700 km, so Nairobi to Johannesburg is one flight. A medical coordination desk takes the first call, day or night.

Two LifePort stretchers fitted along the cabin of an ALS Embraer air ambulance
A stretcher, drip stand and medical monitor in the cabin of an ALS Embraer air ambulance
Patients, on LifePort stretchers
2
Range of the ERJ-145 XR
3,700 km
Doctors, anaesthetists, critical-care nurses and paramedics
ICU
Medical coordination desk
Day or night
Air Ambulance

Approvals

Four approvals. One gate at Wilson.

ALS flies under its own air operator certificate, maintains aircraft in its own hangar, trains pilots in its own school and has been registered under IATA's operational safety audit since 2011. The people who sign for all four work at Wilson Airport.

FlyAir Operator Certificate (KCAA)No. 58
MaintainApproved Maintenance OrganisationK/AMO/L/008
TrainApproved Training Organisation
AuditedIOSA registeredSince 2011
Engineers at work on an Embraer ERJ-145 in UN Humanitarian Air Service colours, inside the ALS hangar
Where we fly

From Sierra Leone to Afghanistan. Not many paved runways in between.

Head office, hangar and flight school at Wilson Airport, Nairobi. The places we fly now, and some we flew before.

Three ALS engineers in blue overalls working on an aircraft on jacks

Careers

Most of us started somewhere smaller.

Our Head of Operations started as an apprentice engineer in 1999. Our Procurement Manager started in the stores. Our CEO joined the operations department in 2004, with a private pilot licence that was a few months old. Our cadet programme takes people with no flying experience to the right-hand seat of an ALS aircraft. The rest is up to them.