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Ghana Air leases airplane
Accra - Ghana's troubled national carrier, Ghana Airways, said on Sunday that it has made arrangements to transport passengers stranded while trying to fly between Ghana and the United States. Hundreds of passengers have been stranded at both sides of the Atlantic after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the United States banned the airline from flying into the country for safety reasons. Mawuko Afadzinu, public relations manager of Ghana Airways, said the airline had obtained permission from the FAA to use a leased aircraft to fly passengers with tickets between the two countries. He added that the airline was making arrangements to begin flying the route once more. The FAA banned the airline from flying in and out of the US and impounded its DC-10 at the Baltimore-Washington International Airport in an unprecedented action after the airline failed to renew its permit for the plane.
The board of directors of Ghana Airways, meanwhile, took action against four senior officials over the ban. The head of engineering, senior captain of the DC-10, dispatch manager and officer in charge of operations in the United States were suspended to enable investigations to be conducted into why the aircraft flew to the US despite notification that it had been banned from entering that country, Ken Anku, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Roads and Transport said. The board set up a committee to investigate the matter and take action to forestall any further embarrassment to the national airline.
The airline is saddled with a huge debt and is facing liquidation as its aircraft are aging. Efforts to get another airline to cooperate with Ghana Airways have not materialised. The management has said it inherited a "negative organisational culture", which included rampant pilfering and corrupt practices, uncontrolled authorisation of discounted tickets, an overambitious expansion of its route network, frequent abuse of official and staff privileges in carriage of baggage, an unwieldy organisational structure, a dearth of professionalism and discipline, and paucity of customer orientation. Ghana Airways flies to several West African capitals, Washington, London, New York, Johannesburg and Harare.