Africa World Airlines to suspend Monrovia, Freetown operations
Accra-based regional airline, Africa World Airlines (AWA), is to suspend its Monrovia and Freetown operations in the coming month due mainly to operational issues.
The withdrawal is to allow the airline to focus more on the domestic market and its Accra-Lagos-Accra and Accra-Abuja-Accra operations.
According to AviationGhana sources, AWA, which operates a fleet of eight Embraer ERJ-145LR with a capacity of 50 passengers, has had challenges in recent weeks with equipment.
With only five aircraft in service now, the airline has been forced to cancel some scheduled domestic flights and regional flights, forcing a rethink of how best to utilize the available fleet on both the domestic and remaining regional routes.
AWA currently operates scheduled flights from its base in Accra to Kumasi, Takoradi, and Tamale. For regional flights, it services the Accra-Lagos-Accra and Accra-Abuja-Accra routes.
Indigenous Ghanaian airline, Africa World Airlines (AWA), started its daily service between Accra and Monrovia/Freetown on Sept. 5, 2019, as part of a measure to deepen its footprints in the sub-region.
Fight for domestic market share
The challenges of AWA have not gone unnoticed. The second domestic operator, PassionAir, has steadily increased its market share domestically.
AWA, which transported about 600,000 passengers in 2021 despite the impact of the pandemic and controlled 65 percent of the domestic market, has now lost ground on the domestic market to PassionAir.
Data seen by AviationGhana shows the close competition for market dominance between the only two operators in the country.
PassionAir has been a beneficiary of AWA’s recent challenges and is now almost at par with AWA on domestic market share.
