Kenya suspends flights from United Arab Emirates

Kenya has suspended all inbound and transit passenger flights from the United Arabs Emirates (UAE) for seven days.

This comes after a move by Dubai to ban all passenger flights from Kenya over alleged fake Covid tests.

The ban took effect Monday midnight, according to Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) Director-General Gilbert Kibe.

The restriction, however, does not apply to cargo flights from the UAE to Kenya, which are generally operated by Kenya Airways and Emirates Airlines.

"Inbound and transit passenger flights from UAE are suspended for a period of seven days. We are doing this to reciprocate a ban on Kenyan passenger flights to UAE," said Kibe.

The embargo comes only a few days after the UAE extended a flying ban to Kenya after discovering that passengers from Nairobi were testing positive for Covid-19 after arriving in the Middle Eastern country, despite having negative test results.

The conspiracy, according to KCAA Director-General Gilbert Kibe, comprised a racket of private medical testing centres that conspired with travellers to produce fraudulent Covid-19 PCR results to help their flight to Dubai.