The immediate future of Delta Air Lines Inc.’s flight from Atlanta to Kenya is unknown after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security nixed the inaugural the night before its June 2 launch.

The flight was scheduled leave Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, cross the Atlantic and make a stop in Dakar, Senegal, before continuing east across the continent to Nairobi, Kenya’s capital.

The Transportation Security Administration, which operates under Homeland Security, notified Delta on the evening of June 1 that it wasn’t approving one of the world’s largest airline’s most-anticipated new Africa routes. 

So far, government officials from both countries have been mum on the specific reason that TSA denied a U.S. airline access to a foreign destination for the first time in the agency’s seven-year history.

News agencies in Kenya have speculated that increased violence in neighboring Somalia and intelligence revealing terrorist threats on U.S. flights to Nairobi gave the U.S. authorities pause about the flight.

Those reports couldn’t be confirmed, and the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi would only say that “last-minute issues” caused the postponement.  In a statement, TSA noted “security vulnerabilities in and around Nairobi.”

A TSA official wouldn’t comment on the specific nature of those issues, but told GlobalAtlanta that TSA made the decision with input from a broad range of U.S. agencies, including the State Department.

The Kenyan government was caught off guard by the announcement and defended the country’s security record, saying the Kenya Airport Authority had met all of TSA’s security requirements and passed its reviews.

The TSA official confirmed that but told GlobalAtlanta,“You have to take a very holistic approach when you look at aviation security and Western interests in Kenya.”

“It’s not one piece or the other, but it has to be the entire environment,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Kenyan government officials were incensed that they learned of the cancellation from reports on Web sites rather than directly from U.S. officials.

“Great friends like America and Kenya cannot communicate through Web site postings.  I'm sure we can have a much better line of communication,” said Kenyan Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula, flanked by U.S. Ambassasador Michael Ranneberger at a June 2 press briefing.

Mr. Ranneberger said “I regret the manner in which this decision reached the Kenyan government.  I think the minister is right to be concerned about it.”

To allay fears that the cancellation amounts to a travel warning against Kenya, the ambassador stressed the word “postponement,” commending the Kenyan government for its strides in aviation security and saying the U.S. would do its best to ensure that the flight launches.

TSA has said the flight would be approved when “security threat assessments change” but gave no indication as to when that could occur.

Delta spokespersons would not comment beyond the statement the airline issued Tuesday, June 2, which reaffirmed the airline’s commitment to Africa.  Delta operates six Africa routes and is the only U.S. airline to fly its planes directly from the U.S. to Africa.

At the same time it halted the Kenya flight, TSA also denied approval to Delta’s flight from New York to Monrovia, Liberia, which was to start June 8.  The agency said Monrovia’s airport didn’t meet international security standards but that TSA has a team stationed there working to help the airport remedy its problems.

TSA approved a new Delta route to Abuja, the capital of Nigeria.  That flight starts on June 11. Delta's route to Lagos, Nigeria, is one of its most profitable. 

Some Atlantans of Kenyan descent were looking forward to the flight but now have to readjust their outlook.

“I think we were all taken by surprise, but I believe that we have to pick up the pieces and keep going,” said Irene Mbari-Kirika, a native Kenyan who in 2006 started Our Reading Spaces, a foundation aimed at building libraries in Kenya’s rural villages.

She came to Atlanta in 1998 as a business student at Kennesaw State University.  She wasn’t planning to fly on the inaugural Nairobi flight, but her organization was using it to send a shipment of 22,000 books.

Ms. Mbari-Kirika plans to meet with Delta soon to determine what to do with the 20 two-ton pallets of books donated to her foundation by a charity called Books for Africa.  Delta had planned to carry the cargo free of charge, she said.

Ms. Mbari-Kirika is still going to Kenya in July, whether Delta has started its flight or not.  As for security concerns, she believes Kenya is safe and doesn’t think its image as a tourist destination will be harmed, as Kenyan officials fear.

Paul Waithaka, who publishes the Kenya Monitor, a newspaper for the Kenyan community in Boston, agreed. 

“The hope is still there [for the flight],” he told GlobalAtlanta while attending an ethnic media event in Atlanta.  “By all indications this is just a slight glitch.”

Kenyan officials can only hope.  Many visitors shied away from Kenya in 2008 after violence rocked the country in the wake of disputed presidential elections in December 2007.  More than 1,000 people were killed. Tourism, an industry that took in $1 billion for the country in 2007, had been slowly recovering.

Delta originally planned to launch the Nairobi flight from New York's JFK International Airport last summer but postponed it because the airline was uncertain that it could sustain demand in view of rising fuel prices and the political turmoil.

Kenyan officials including their U.S. Ambassador Peter Ogego have visited Atlanta in recent months, indicating that with the new Delta flight, the Georgia capital would be an important source market for tourists.

Kenya Tourism Minister Najib Balala, who attended President Obama’s inauguration in January, told GlobalAtlanta in a video interview in Atlanta at that time that no tourists were injured in the post-election turmoil and that “Kenya is a very safe country, safer even than Atlanta.”

Mr. Balala said tourism officials hope to capitalize on Mr. Obama’s Kenyan heritage by developing an “Obama route” that would take travelers from Nairobi to Kogelo, the remote village where Mr. Obama’s father grew up and his grandmother still lives. Read more about the Obama route.

Akanmu Adebayo, director of the Institute for Global Initiatives at Kennesaw State University, said before the flight cancellation that the U.S.'s unjustified travel warnings have caused it to fall behind Europe in courting business in Kenya.

“The American business community needs to be exposed and enlightened as to what opportunities there are in a place like Kenya,” he said.

“The U.S. continues to maintain that Kenya is unsafe. Europeans know that Kenya is safe and they have basically cornered the market; you can break into that market by investing in hotels, investing in transportation and also making loans available to the government to build roads to take people to major places of tourist importance.”

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