Jomo Kenyatta International Airport

Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA/NBO), named for Kenya's founding president, is the largest airport in East and Central Africa and one of the busiest aviation gateways on the continent, handling more than 8 million passengers and over 340,000 tonnes of cargo a year. It is the principal hub of Kenya Airways, a SkyTeam member, and a major African node for Qatar Airways, Emirates, KLM, British Airways, Turkish Airlines and Ethiopian. NBO's dominant share of East African passenger traffic and its status as a key fresh-produce cargo gateway make it strategically the most important airport between Johannesburg and Cairo. The airport sits on the Embakasi plains about 15 km (9 mi) southeast of central Nairobi, at a very high tropical elevation of 5,330 ft (1,624 m) that places it firmly in the high-altitude category for performance and engine-out planning. A single 13,507 ft (4,117 m) asphalt runway (06/24) — one of the longest in Africa — supports all widebody operations including the A380. Terminals 1A, 1B, 1C and 1D each handle a specific carrier mix, and Terminal 2 is dedicated to low-cost and regional flights; planned replacement of the main terminal complex by a single new Terminal T under the Greenfield program would lift capacity above 20 million passengers per year. Forty-two airlines link NBO to 70 nonstop destinations, including dense long-haul networks to London, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Zurich, Istanbul, Doha, Dubai, Jeddah, Mumbai and Guangzhou, plus short-haul to nearly every major African capital from Accra and Lagos to Addis Ababa, Kigali and Johannesburg. Kenya Airways flies transatlantic to New York JFK, making NBO one of only a handful of sub-Saharan African airports with direct North American service. Its combined passenger reach, cargo weight and geopolitical role as the de facto hub of the African Great Lakes region keep NBO a continental linchpin (2025).