Airlines Protest Against Unannounced Closures Of Kumasi Airport

Domestic airline operators have registered their utter displeasure at the unannounced morning closure of the Kumasi airport since October 17. In a statement issued to the GNA, they said as stakeholders they deserved some respect and notification before such a move was initiated. It said the unannounced closures had affected operations greatly. �Since we were not informed about these closures, we were unable to inform our passengers. This has caused a lot of inconvenience to our passengers especially some who have connecting flights from Accra, Ghana," the statement said. When contacted, the GACL said the closures were not pre-planned, thus their inability to notify the airlines ahead of time. The closures, they said, had been necessitated by recent rains which delayed the normal schedule of the ongoing works on the Kumasi airport runway. According to the Company, although the forecasts they received on each since last Friday had indicated clear weather, it had rained during the night, hampering the work of the contractor who only works from 1800 hours to 0600 hours. "Because the contractor works in phases, he is not able to hand the runway over to the airport manager after it rains because the area that is worked on has to cure and dry well before he does," the Company said, adding that the time the contractor informed them of the delay did not allow them to issue a NOTAM to the airlines. It said the ideal thing would have been to close the airport for the duration of the works but the GACL is trying to meet the airlines and passengers halfway by paying the contractor to work at night. �It is only because of safety reasons that the airport was closed in the morning since Friday," the Company said. The Company said it was monitoring the weather patterns and if this persisted they would discuss with the airlines and issue an official NOTAM advising the airlines to reschedule their operations to Kumasi to start at 1000 hours in order to avoid such inconvenience."