Adnan Adams Mohammed
The Ghana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) has revealed that, two more airline companies are expected to join Ghana’s aviation industry soon.
The Director General of the Authority, Simon Allotey explains that the coming on board of the two should drive competition and impact on the cost of domestic airfares.
With this new announcement, it is emerging that a reduction in air transport fares will afford consumers the necessary comfort yearned for over the months.
The two companies; Ashanti Airline and Gold Coast Airline, have now started the process of obtaining their air carrier licenses.
This is the initial stage to indicate their readiness to operate within the aviation industry.
Mr. Simon Allotey has explained what lies ahead of the two companies for a complete start of their operations.
“Once they get the air carrier license, they go through a five phase air certification license program and upon completion, they are issued an air operator certificate which means they have become a fully-fledged operator capable of operating scheduled passenger and cargo operations too,” he stated.
Already, Unity Air and Baby Jet Airlines are working to start operations in the domestic airspace.
Their coming on board will mean there will be three local airlines, including Africa World Airlines which is currently the only local airline company.
The coming on board of Ashanti and Gold Coast Airlines will therefore bring the number to five, all things being equal.
This will equally deepen competition and provide options to the flying public.
Commenting on what have been the new interventions to avert another round of possible collapse of local airlines such as Antrak Air, Fly540, CitiLink and Starbow, the GCAA boss, Simon Allotey, outlined the new plans by his outfit.
“If you tell an airline do not use a Boeing aircraft but use an Airbus or opt for a Bombardier as against an Embraer, and there are issues, they will point to the regulator and blame it in the event of any unfortunate incident. So what we try to do is to engage them more, get to know their problems in real time and if there are issues and pieces of advice that we could, we would do so,” he said.
