SAA to begin direct flights to US
South African Airways (SAA) has taken advantage of the inadequate direct connections between West Africa and North America to launch a direct flight from Ghana to the United States capital, Washington DC.
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Starting August 2 this year, passengers travelling from Ghana and neighbouring West African countries can fly directly to Washington non-stop.
An Executive Manager in charge of SAA’s Africa Hub Projects, Mr Kendy Phohleli, said in Accra on Thursday that the new route was part of the airline’s long-term strategy to expand its network and bring in new traffic.
“West Africa is important for us because it is underserved, especially into North America. About 80 per cent of passengers travelling between the two regions actually connect through Europe. This means inconvenient travel times, higher costs and visa issues to travel via Europe,” Mr Phohleli said to justify the direct flight from Ghana.
Since national carriers promote trade and tourism for the home country, many airlines over the years use their home countries as the connecting hub or first port of call in any long haul travel. SAA’s strategy is therefore a departure from the norm and marks a changing trend the airline industry is beginning to embrace.
Mr Phohleli said the non-stop flight to North America would stimulate more travel and trade between the two regions, and the executive manager believes it was a commercial opportunity that would inure to the benefit of the airline, Ghana and West Africa as a whole.
The airline plans to begin with four times a week schedule, emphasising their belief in the Accra-Washington route about which Mr Phohleli was optimistic would become popular in West Africa.
Co-share with Africa World Airline
South African Airways is concluding discussions with African World Airlines (AWA) for a co-share agreement that would see the domestic airline serve as a feeder airline to SAA. This way, AWA can check their passengers connecting to Washington on SAA, while SAA passengers connecting to other cities in Ghana or West Africa can be put on AWA flights.
This symbiotic relationship between a long haul carrier and regional airlines such as AWA has been long envisaged for Ghana and the SAA’s co-share with AWA will help deepen the country and region’s aviation frontiers.
The SAA Country Manager, Ms Gloria Yirenkyi, explained that the Washington flight would have 42 business class and 275 economy class seats, adding that SAA would bring its high quality service and safety records to bear on serving passengers on the route.
SAA has been operating in Ghana since 1996, three times a week. Two years ago, it started a daily flight between Accra and Johannesburg.
The airline also used to fly directly to Washington via Accra until now. Management said other West African countries in the hubs project included Cote d’Ivoire and Nigeria.