Ghana must have its own carrier - Cecilia Dapaah

Aviation Minister-designate Cecilia Abena Dapaah has said plans are underway to ensure that Ghana gets its own airline.

According to her, the lack of airline for Ghana is depriving the state of several millions of cedis because air travel across the world is raking in a lot of income to countries that have their own airlines.

Speaking during her vetting by the Appointments Committee of parliament on Wednesday February 8, she said: “I have sighted a document that can aid us have our own airline. I have talked to the Ghana Airports Company Limited as well as Ghana Civil Aviation Authority and feasibility studies have been done by the previous government. It was done by PricewaterhouseCoopers and I believe we will have a study of the findings and add up what we have received so far and take it up from there.

“What I will add is that I have talked to a lot of people and I believe in my heart that Ghana is ripe to have its own carrier, at least to start with the ECOWAS sub-region and move on to regional and then take it up from there.

“That will be the baby that I will give birth to by His grace, because at the end of the day, as one consultant said, people are eating our lunch, our dinner and our breakfast because we have 18,000 passengers by British Airways annually. The whole world, for instance, we have seven billion people travelling by air and as we can see in the ECOWAS sub-region alone, we have 326 million people. In Africa, 1.2 billion people and 60 per cent of all travels is done by air. So, there is no doubt that at least we can have a niche inside there for Ghana and with all the passion and fire burning in me, I will make sure that we get a national carrier.”