Nothing gets you in the safari spirit quite like boarding a tiny six-seater aircraft at Nairobi’s Wilson Airport for the short hop to a grassy airstrip in the middle of the Maasai Mara. Since it was founded in 2004, Safarilink Aviation has plied the routes to Kenya’s most celebrated wildlife parks. “Safari is in our DNA”, says Alex Avedi, who took over as chief executive in the middle of last year. It has been an extraordinary shift for Avedi, from a 12-year stint as a senior executive at national airline Kenya Airways to a small carrier which has at its core a charter business flying clients to remote destinations.
“Kenya Airlines is really mass market; you hardly know your customer”, says Avedi. “This is very concierge, very bespoke. You have to understand what your customer wants to go the extra mile. You can’t say ‘your flight is cancelled, take another one tomorrow.’ There always has to be a solution, no matter how costly that is to you.” Avedi started out as a banker before, as he puts it, he had a mid-life crisis and trained to be a commercial pilot. Rather than fly for his living, however, he decided instead to move into management and strategy, where he could “put together the pieces of the puzzle.”