Air travellers to Kumasi last Friday evening, January 23, had the opportunity to experience the inaugural night flight of domestic carrier, Africa World Airlines (AWA).
The airline, which is the first to introduce scheduled night time operations in the local airline industry, had 38 passengers onboard its 50 seater-aircraft for the first flight to the Kumasi Airport on Friday.
The flight took off at 7:30 p.m. from the Kotoka International Airport in Accra and arrived safely at the Kumasi Airport at about 8:00p.m.
The Brand Experience Manager of AWA, Mr Samuel Razak Tachie, told journalists upon arrival at the Kumasi Airport, that the inaugural flight was highly successful.
“The flight landed under 30 minutes and it was good. For a maiden flight, we had 38 passengers on board. A portion of them were non-revenue passengers but we had more than half being revenue passengers and that is very good,” he said.
According to him, the airline would operate two night flights from Accra to Kumasi subsequently.
“We operated five flights to Kumasi today and this is just the beginning of more things to come. We will have 6:30p.m. and 7:30p.m. flights subsequently, but we are starting with 7:30p.m,” he explained.
Night scheduled operations at the Kumasi Airport have been made possible with the new light and an instrument landing system that guide planes to land with special vision instruments.
Passengers impressed with flight
Some passengers on board the first flight described their experience as a normal one compared to the day time flights.
A passenger, Mr Adams Abudu Goni told the Daily Graphic that he did not experience any panic although that was the first time he was joining a night flight to Kumasi.
“The flight was good. It is normal like the day one because we didn’t experience any turbulence and it landed smoothly. It was also very convenient because looking at the time I closed, I would have gone to queue at the VIP station to board a bus to Kumasi,” he said.
Credit: Daily Graphic