Korean Air to cancel flights to Nairobi over Ebola virus

Korean Air will temporarily suspend its Incheon-Nairobi flight route starting Wednesday in a bid to prevent the spread of the Ebola virus.

The World Health Organization (WHO) classified Kenya as a Category 2 country on Wednesday local time due to the high transmission risk of the virus in the nation.

Korean Air’s decision followed the WHO announcement.

Several other carriers worldwide have been suspending their routes to West African countries, prompting the WHO to release a statement saying that the chances Ebola will spread via aircraft is low.

“Unlike infections such as influenza or tuberculosis, Ebola is not airborne,” Isabelle Nuttall, director of the WHO Global Capacity Alert and Response, wrote online on Thursday.

“It can only be transmitted by direct contact with the body fluids of a person who is sick with the disease.”

Any ticket holder of a flight on the route after Wednesday will have to change his or her travel plans.

Korea’s largest carrier flies to Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, three times a week on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Its planes on that route have a capacity of 220 passengers per flight.

The company said it does not know when it will resume the flight.