**Many flights from Kenya’s main airport have been grounded as workers from the national airline go on strike, leaving passengers stranded in Nairobi.**The main aviation union called the industrial action after talks with the management of Kenya Airways failed to resolve a dispute over pay.
A BBC reporter says the union’s secretary general and three other top union members have been arrested.
Kenya Airways says it would have to close if it agreed to the demands.
The BBC’s Wazir Khamsin says the airline’s workers, who are members of the Aviation and Allied Workers Union, want a pay rise of 130%.
They have rejected the company’s offer of a 13% increase.
“We’ll just have to fold up, there are no two ways about it. I can’t give you what I don’t have”
Kenya Airways’s Titus Naikuni
The union members say their salaries have not increased to the same extent as those of senior managers and pilots.
Kenya Airways, which employs nearly 3,000 workers, says its offer will push the company’s annual wage bill to about $10m (£6m).
If it complied with the union’s demands the amount would rise to $110m a year.
“We’ll just have to fold up, there are no two ways about it,” Kenyan Airways Chief Executive Titus Naikuni is quoted as saying by Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper.
“I can’t give you what I don’t have.”
Our reporter says the detained union officials are expected to be charged with inciting people to strike illegally.
Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport is one of the busiest airports in central Africa.