EDITORIAL: GIA - No Feet Dragging Please!

As stated in Accra Daily Mail's lead story yesterday, Ghana International Airlines has published its Summer 2005 Schedule.

We are very encouraged by that because what it means is that there can be no going back. Ghanaians can now look forward to their national carrier taking to the skies this year.

To be brutally frank, if there was one "no show" that was most embarrassing to even the most ardent supporter of the Kufuor Administration, it was the grounding of Ghana Airways and the length of time it was taking to get a replacement.

Granted, the problems of the airline were not the making of the administration, but a speedy resolution was expected. Many consortiums showed interest in stepping into the breach, but eventually it was the Ghana International Airlines Limited (GIA) that stuck with us with all our quirky ways of doing business thrown in as excess baggage.

Even as we write, our optimism may be short lived if the Ghanaian side of the deal continues with feet dragging and the quirkiness referred to above.

The Ghanaian side may know of details we lesser mortals are not familiar with, but to us ordinary people, any day that passes without our national carrier taking to the skies impacts negatively on the government.

Now that the summer schedules have been published, the Rubicon has been crossed and all those who have to play their parts on both the Ghanaian and American sides of this deal MUST do it.

We have to wrap up this national carrier problem now!

There are many highly qualified former employees of the defunct Ghana Airways still without jobs. They cannot be left indefinitely in limbo. We hope that in the coming few weeks, those who will be laid off would be amply compensated and those who would be recalled would don their new uniforms to make Ghana once more proud in the skies.

And a word of advice to those former employees of Ghana Airways who would be re-engaged by GIA: We are sure you have learnt your lessons. This new airline has no room for any behavioral excess baggage.

You will have to live up to the expectations and standards of a real international airline. In other words, you will have to leave behind all the bad old excess baggage of the past and move into the future as real professionals.

The success or failure of the new airline may actually depend on you.