SCRAMBLE FOR AIRLINE LICENCE

Air Cdre Kwame Mamphey (Rtd), Director-General of the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA)in an interview with Business Guide.

Posted on: www.businessguideghana.com

By William Yaw Owusu

Tuesday December 13, 2011.
There is fierce scramble for airline operator’s licence as companies try to take advantage of the emerging economic potential of the country to do business.

According to Air Cdre Kwame Mamphey (Rtd), Director-General of the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA), apart from the four domestic airlines currently in operation, “there are a lot more applying to operate here”.

“The four carriers are working well and there are many others who have applied to operate domestically, the west coast and transcontinental flights. They are currently going through certification and hopefully, next year we will see serious activities.”

Air Cdre Mamphey, a pilot, told Business Guide exclusively on Friday that Ghana’s promising future economic potential was the driving force behind the surge in business interests.

He said, “Even though more companies are applying, not all of them can come into the domestic sector. We are going to have issues over capacity and so on. We are working it out in such a way that we have just enough to take care of the passengers because the bulk of the new ones who are coming in actually want to do west coast and also intercontinental operations.”

He added that there had been significant developments in the domestic airline operations as they contributed significantly towards economic growth of the nation and as a result, passengers now had a choice.

“The fares have gone down significantly by about 40 percent. That has increased and encouraged more people to travel by air domestically. It is now easier for people who ordinarily would have travelled by bus to now come and go by air.”

“In so doing, they avoid road hazards including accidents and armed robberies. This has been the aim of GCAA and I am glad to say that we are achieving it.”

The GCAA director-general said having succeeded in getting more people to fly, the authority, in the first quarter of 2012, would embark on a programme to encourage the local carriers to also start flying along the west coast of Africa.

“I am very hopeful that if this is done, it would bring down the fares and give the travelling public a choice. It should be possible for you to decide when you want to travel and how much you want to pay.”

On the possibility of a national carrier, Air Cdre Mamphey predicted that it might not take that long for Ghana to get back a national carrier.

“It is unfortunate we do not have a national carrier. All Ghanaians wish that Ghana Airways or Ghana International Airline was still in operation. I think we need to take our time. In an attempt to re-establish a national carrier, we should be careful not to get into those issues that grounded Ghana Airways and GIA.”

“GCAA has basically acted as a catalyst to the economic development of the country. Most of the people who come here to do business from outside, be it the Americas, Europe and the far East, have come in through Kotoka International Airport (KIA) and that is money.”

He said very soon, Ghana would get back the FAA Category 1 status which it lost in 2006, adding however that, “I cannot give you the exact date because we have to first of all go through the technical review which we are doing now and the gaps which are identified we will work on very quickly to facilitate the attainment but for certain in 2012 we should attain Category 1 status.”

He said the FAA technical experts were on a week-long assessment visit to conduct a technical review to identify the gaps in the system, noting, “We will address them and they will be back for an audit and hopefully we should pass and get the category 1 back.”

The GCAA Boss said due to the tremendous improvement of security and safety at KIA, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) of the United States had decided to set up their regional offices in Accra, adding, “If they do not have confidence in our system they would not set up offices here. There is no doubt that within the sub-region we are the safest.”

“Aviation security and safety are two different issues we should always tackle concurrently. In terms of safety in the skies, we know that for now we are very safe because of the equipment we have put in place. We have radar that gives us a picture of what is happening in the air to ensure that aircraft do not fly into each other.”

Air Cdre Mamphey stated that the decoupling of airport management functions had helped the GCAA to concentrate on its core regulatory functions.

“Hitherto, GCAA was responsible for the airport and air traffic management but currently we are focusing on the regulatory aspect as well as the air traffic control.”

He said it was the intention of the government, at a later date, to further decouple the air traffic management aspect of GCAA functions so that air traffic management would be taken away from the authority to enable them to remain solely as the regulators.

He reiterated the resolve of the GCAA not to compromise security and safety at KIA and other local airports which he said would receive major facelifts next year.