Last month, His Excellency the President of Uganda Yoweri Kaguta Museveni made a request to Kenya Airways (KQ) to make a detour to Mbarara Town to pick him up on his way to the 16th Regional Heads of State Summit. The airline administration declined to grant this request and the President had to find other means of transportation which he did thereby arriving for the summit on 20th February 2015.

Since that incident a lot has been said in the media about the incident by individuals, parliaments and the airline company. The Kenyan parliament is investigating the case, and KQ officials termed the situation as ‘regrettable’.

However, looking at all this I can only wonder what the hullabaloo is all about. A plane with the number of clients and passengers that KQ has should not be one that changes its course on the whim of one person – even if it is a head of state. Landing at an unplanned location without the security provided for as at an International airport would have been a bad call. Whoever made the call to not divert from the planned course must have heard the thousands of people who would be changing their mind and not using KQ again because their planned trajectory may or may not be adhered to.

The President’s ire at the situation is misplaced too because if he would think past his hurt pride he would see that given the chance he would have made the same call as the airline. Responding positively to his request would have set a bad precedent for the airline because next time they would not be able to decline any such requests of other heads of state and therefore not giving KQ passengers faith in the airline. Passengers need to know that they will get to where they are going on time, safely and with the least inconveniences.

The incident may have caused the President of Uganda to lose faith in the airline but it strengthened the current and prospective passengers’ faith in its reliability. KQ said loudly that the passenger comes first.