Travel Alert: Beware Of Charter Flights From Ghana

...You may lose your money if… The notorious Flyjet is coming back to Ghana with a breakaway faction of the infamous Ghana Travel Ltd! Travellers are advised to be discriminatory in their choice of travel operator and not necessarily to go after cheap flights where they may lose their money when the tricks of the industry are pulled again!

Charter flights from Ghana are not the charter flights that one may find as defined in the world of travel. There is now a proliferation of charter flights operations since the demise of the late Ghana Airways.

The situation is so bad that all the rules regulating the industry are being flouted flagrantly without any intervention by the regulators of the industry. In fact, they have no technical advisors and they do not intend to seek any. They would rather contact some of the operators for some compromising advice.

In one instance, the defunct Ghana Travel Ltd was running “Charter Flights six (6) times a week” and apparently never paid the insurance bond which was a mandatory requirement for acquiring an Air Travel Organisers Licence (ATOL) that was to cover the claims and refunds to stranded passengers in case of insolvency.

It is good for Ghana Tourism to have some PR on Gabby's Airtime on TV3 when all is going wrong with wanton promotion of tourism geared towards a mass market tourism cycle devoid of sustainability and a tourism penetration index.

In addition to that, all the charter flights operators are selling “seats only” as opposed to the traditional “package tours” that was glorified by the Minister of Tourism and Modernisation of the Capital City as a way of bringing tourists into the country.

Almost all the operators of charter flights are actively running marketing campaigns (against the rules) to sell their cheap flights and have now become competitors to the regular scheduled flights operators like British Airways and Kenyan Airways.

The formula for acquiring an ATOL licence to operate charter flights is becoming easier…cos when so many top officials have got their fingers in the pie, you can be assured that only busybody Consumer Activists are the ones to come on the offensive…not even the passengers may, except those that know the insiders behind the scam.

Next time you book your travel, get proof of insurance from the Charter Operator (and make sure you know the directions to the offices of the Ghana Tourist Board at Tesano, Accra) or the Carrier!

Remember there are a lot of tricks in the worldwide Air Travel industry just like PYRAM!