Ghana Airways' ticket sales drop by 19billion

As the days tick away, it is becoming abundantly clear that the Management Task Force set up by the government of the ruling New Patriotic Party to steer affairs of Ghana Airways (Ghanair) from the turbulent waters has no clue to the company?s problems. The airline?s sales for the first quarter of the year have dropped sharply by ?19 billion as against ?30 billion sales made in the first quarter of 2001. This amount covered only IATA travel agents who account for over 90 per cent of total sales of Ghanair.

Figures of total sales for the first quarter of 2001 indicate that Ghanair bagged ?30 billion as compared to ?11 billion in the first quarter of this year.

This represents a variance of 173 per cent. While the difference between sales for the years 2000 and 2001 resulted from exchange rate gains, the argument cannot hold for the huge difference between 2001 and 2002 sales performance, the ?Ghanaian Chronicle? learnt. Before arriving at this conclusion, the exchange rates for the years 2000, 2001 and 2002 were taken into consideration.

The Management Task Force headed by Captain Kofi Kwakwa is compounding the already aggravated problems of the airline through managerial lapses and if government and the Board of Directors of the airline do not put their feet down promptly to remedy the situation, it may be too late for the state to save the airline under the present management.

?Chronicle? can reveal that the maneuvering of the controversial Joseph Mensah Brown, the second in command is creating a lot of negative ripples all over. For instance, Joe Brown is now trespassing at the marketing section of the company without regard to anybody.

Such trespassing is one of the major factors that had led to the serious decline in the company?s output so far. Instead of allowing the marketing department of the airline, which is well positioned on marketing issues to design the flight schedules, Joe Brown maneuvered and assigned himself marketing duties and changed the flight schedules without consulting any of the marketing gurus. This has turned out to be a disaster to the company as many of the airline?s customers are now shunning it to join other competitors whose schedules favour their movements.

The Ghana Association of Travel and Tour Agents (GATTA) headed by Jony Monreaus who were alarmed by the abysmal performance of Ghanair, on May 8, this year, held a meeting a with some top marketing officials of the airline to express their concerns.

The meeting was to express the profound apprehension at the fast rate at which Ghanair is losing market share to its competitors and the poor sales performance of GATTA members on Ghanair apparently due to the dwindling quality of the Ghanair product. When Chronicle reached Capt Kwakwa to react to the concerns, he declined to speak.