The grounding of a Ghana Airways flight by the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) has been attributed to lack of communication between the GCAA and the national carrier. The Abuja bound flight was grounded by the Aviation Authority for non-payment of oversight charges on Wednesday, but Ghana Airways described the action as uncalled for.
The Chairman of the management task force at Ghana Airways, Captain Kofi Kwakwa told JOYFM that the airline had reached an agreement to pay $10,000 daily to cover a week’s charge of $58,000 for oversight charges.
He said some air traffic contollers who seemed ignorant about the payment arrangement refused to allow the flight to take off delaying it by two hours. Ghana Airways has an outstanding debt of six million dollars with the aviation authorities. Four million of the amount is owed the government and two million to the GCAA.
When on Wednesday, GCAA took that action against the Airways West Coast flight for about two hours they said it was meant "to recover huge sums of money owed it by several airlines."
An official of the GCAA told the GNA that the national carrier owes some six million dollars.
Last week, Air Afrique, Air Gabon, Air Cameroon and Air Morocco suffered a similar fate for defaulting in over-flight charges to GCAA.
Among passengers who were affected by the delay was the Speaker of Parliament, Mr Peter Ala Adjetey who was on his way to attend the African Parliamentary Union Conference in Abuja, Nigeria.
Captain Joe Boachie, Director of GCAA, said Ghana Airways' debt dates back several years and the action should not be viewed as heavy-handedness.
He said the Authority has "bent over backwards" to accommodate Ghana Airways but to no avail and this is creating difficulties for the authority to carry out its expansion programme at the airport.
Captain Boachie said recently the two institutions agreed that Ghana Airways should either pay its charges up front or on a daily basis, but the airline failed to honour its promise.
"Ghana Airways continues to fly to foreign destinations, which means that they pay their (bills) to those countries, so why not in Ghana?
"In other not to delay our expansion and rehabilitation project we will recover every debt and ensure that this project is not hampered."
A source at Ghana Airways confirmed its indebtedness to GCAA and said an initial instalment has been paid and effort is being made to pay the rest.
