Kenya has two three international Airports. Jomo Kenyatta International Airport located in Nairobi, Moi international airport located in the coatal tourist town of Mombasa and Eldoret Airport located in the agricultural town of Eldoret in the Rift Valley. If you’re traveling from Europe or North America to Kenya or East Africa for that matter, you’ll likely fly in through Jomo Kenyatta International Airport commonly referred to using its abbreviation as JKIA. While Mombasa officially also has an international airport – Moi Int’l Airport – this is limited to flights to/from neighboring countries, as well as some international charter flights from tour operators. The other Nairobi airport, Wilson Airport only operates domestic and regional flights within Kenya and Tanzania.

 

JKIA is located approximately 15 km outside Nairobi’s city centre. It’s the 7th busiest airport in Africa. By any African standards, it has good facilities with 2 international terminals and third terminal mainly used for domestic flights.

 

Airport Facilities

Facilities include a large number of duty free shops, bars, restaurants and several VIP lounges. There’s also an internet café. The airport has 100 long-term and 900 short-term parking spaces. Car hire is possible from Avis, Budget, Europcar and Hertz, among others with offices located within the airport. Currency exchange is possible within Bureaus at the arrivals terminals or you can use your credit card to withdraw Kenyan shillings (KSH) from the ATM in the hall, near the entrance. Exchange rate is about 80 Kenyan shillings for 1 US$ or 110 Kenya shillings for 1 Euro.

 

Cabs to the city center and hotels

It is always prudent to make prior arrangements to be picked at the Airport upon arrival whether you are visiting on holiday or business. If you leave out the airport hall, you’ll have to pass by a huge crowd of taxi drivers and people trying to sell you hotels and safaris – also at night. If not, there’s a small desk right at the entrance from where you can get an official taxi. You pay a fixed price at the desk and will be escorted to your cab. Anyway, you should approximately pay 1500 KSH (US$ 20) for a cab to the city centre hotels. Taxis are safe, but you’ll have to negotiate the price before getting in (if you don’t use the airport desk).

The up market hotels often have their own shuttle service to the airport.

 

Flights to Nairobi

Nairobi is the main air hub for East Africa and has good air connections. Air companies flying internationally to Nairobi include Dutch KLM, Emirates, Virgin Atlantic, British Airways, Swiss Air, Sabena, Air India, South African Airlines and Kenya Airways. Currently, there are no direct flights from North America or Australia & New Zealand to Nairobi. From North America you can best fly over Europe, and from down under you’ll likely change flights in Mauritius or the Persian Gulf.

You may use these resources get the best bargain for flights to Nairobi:

• Kayak.com searches low cost flights from 140+ travel sites in just seconds. They have a lot of flights to Kenya and they save me hours of research every time.

• My other big time saver is Vayama.com. This site searches 100 airline sites fro cheap tickets to Kenya, and often brings back more results than any other engine online. It's especially geared to travelers to and from the USA and Western Europe.

• Farecompare

Changing Flights

Many travelers coming into JKIA airport get a connecting flight to e.g. Mombasa, which is the main hub for the popular beach resorts and huge safari parks like Tsavo East and West. As the airport is small and pretty reliable, it’s easy to change flights and you shouldn’t need more time between flights than 2 hours.

 

Airport Expansion

The JKIA expansion program is at advanced stages to be able to carter for more than 4 million travelers the airport handles annually.

Jomo Kenyatta was Kenya’s first president and the airport derives its name thereof.