So yeah, flying on America West mostly sucks, but it could be much worse. Take Ghana Airways for example. Ghana Air hasn’t renewed its operating license to fly into US airspace. The US Department of Transportation has banned them from flying here anyway because of “serious questions surrounding the safety of its aircraft”. 200 Accra-bound passengers have been stranded in BWI limbo after one of Ghana Air’s two remaining DC-10s was grounded for safety reasons (leaving them with only one long-haul jet). Big surprise then than Ghana Airways’ passenger comments vary between angry and wrathful while industry watchers look on with disdain.
Meanwhile Ghana Airways has been rummaging through the Mojave Airport mothball fleet for replacement jets, but I suspect that the FAA takes a dim view of painting your airplane with (get this) paint rollers. However, Ghana Airways isn’t through looking for help just quite yet:
What does an airline do when it has only five planes, only one of them is still flying and that one, too, is grounded with a “Technical”? When for years it has been sitting on $160 million of debts thanks to ongoing mismanagement and corruption, its sole shareholder, the government, is reluctant to shell out any more money, and the fourth CEO since the beginning of 2001 cannot make any headway with the problems? When the company, bloated with 1,500 employees, many of them unproductive, has more drivers than vehicles and more secretaries than typewriters, let alone computers, and the payroll is only intermittently paid? They put their trust in God. At the beginning of June, the hopelessness among the workforce of Ghana Airways had reached such proportions that they flew an expatriate preacher back to the capital city, Accra, from London and joined with him in a three-hour prayer session, during which they beseeched the Almighty for help.