Willem Alexandar Hondius, a guru of the low budget airlines business and founding CEO of Jambojet, a subsidiary of Kenya Airways, has died after battling illness in his home in the Netherlands.
Willem, who was serving as a board member of the airline, was instrumental in steering Jambojet into the Kenyan market in its early days, helping to put up the necessary building blocks that have made the airline the leading low cost carrier in Africa.
“His passion for people, customers, steadfast vision, coupled with his vast experience in the aviation industry, propelled the airline to immense success, shortly after beginning our operations,” the company said in its tribute on X a day after staff held a memorial service at the firm’s offices at Industrial Area, Nairobi.
Before joining Jambojet, Willem had worked for Transavia Airlines, a low-cost carrier owned by KLM, the Dutch company that later partnered with KQ when it was looking for a strategic investor in 2012.
“Willem worked for various airlines for over 40 years,” Jambojet CEO Karanja Ndegwa told the Nairobi Business Monthly.
At the time of his death, Willem, a Non-Executive Director in the Jambojet Board, was serving as chairman of the Strategy Board Committee.
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Before his appointment to Jambojet, Willem served as General Manager for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines for Eastern Africa, based out of Nairobi since 2012.
“Prior to that, he was executive vice president and chief commercial officer of Transavia Airlines, a wholly owned subsidiary of KLM and a member of various boards,” the Kenyan airline’s management said.
Mr Ndegwa remembered Willem as the man who led the team that shook up the airlines industry when, in 2014, Jambojet slashed ticket prices from a high of over Sh40,000 one way from Nairobi to Mombasa and Nairobi to Kisumu, by charging an introductory price of Sh2,850.
“We made many mistakes,” he said of the period that he worked as Chief Finance Officer while Willems served as CEO. “But we enhanced the right decisions and corrected or stopped the wrong ones.”
Willem, who was born in 1957, served as Jambojet CEO from 2013 to 2018. He was buried in the Netherlands on Friday, April 19, 2024.
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