Someone asked for a ghanaian aviation story, here is one...
Sobel Air Line has been registered in Ghana with the tacit support of two close buddies of former President of Ghana, Jerry Rawlings*, somewhere about May 2001..
An F-27 Fokker aircraft has been procured from Nigeria ostensibly to resume the domestic flights performed by the grounded Ghana Air Force carrier.
That happened 10 month after 'Air Link', the flagship of the Ghana Air Force (GAF) crashed on June 05, 2000.
That Fokker was initially kept at the Air Force base at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA). After the December 2000 elections it was taken to the Sankofa Aero Club, and finally ferried out of the country immediately after the NDC lost the elections.
Behind that project were Air Commodore Kwame Mamphey and Group Captain Richard Fordwour. The last one was also the 'presidential' pilot of Rawlings. In fact he was the man who then controlled the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) and Ghana Airways....
The 'Sobel Air Line' project was financially backed by Air Force pilot Captain Victor Opoku together with an Indian businessman, Shirish Ravel, owner of Pan African, a Nigerian registered aviation company.
Find the address of this company HERE
This address was situated directly opposite the Aviation House, in Accra, near the airport.
How did these guys operated. The competitors could not get registered as airline or could only obtain licenses solely to perform charter flights, or airlines like MukAir, FanAir, Mframa Airlines have either folded up or have been taxed to the point of insolvency. The ones that could survive a while and collapsed had to compete with Air Link whose operation was wholly absorbed by the ghanian taxpayer.
"At the time private airline operators could not obtain an Air Operators Certificate (AOC) and Air Carrier Licence (ACL) to operate on the domestic market and also to carry civilians respectively. Civil Aviation short-circuited the process by processing the documents for Sobel Airline within a year," fumed one frustrated airline operator.
Airlink's operation, was grounded by the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) following the tragic crash(see higher). Seven people died, while several others suffered varying degrees of injury in a crash blamed on pilot error.
*No political leader has had as much of an impact on Ghana as Jerry John Rawlings. After one unsuccessful coup, Rawlings overthrew the government in 1979. Flight Lieutenant Rawlings was freed from behind bars after a failed mutiny in May 1979.
That jail-break and subsequently successful coup saw Rawlings and his associates seize power in Ghana. He established a People's National Defence Council (PNDC) at the Castle, the seat of government in Accra.
One year later, I saw the man, visiting the new president of Uganda, Museveni, in Entebbe.
Within three years, however, the din was dying down and the euphoria waning. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1984, Rawlings turned right to western donors and the IMF and World Bank. Hardened left-wing comrades accused him of 'betraying the revolution'..
The PNDC days were a period of sheer terror and repression.
Despite his questionable human rights record, Rawlings nevertheless became a darling of the Western donors who poured at least $5b into the Ghanaian economy after the regime signed on to economic reforms.
In 1992, Rawlings finally swapped his airforce fatigues for smart suits and ran for president: he won, and four years later again with 'stolen' elections. He served until 2001, he led two coups but later brought some stability to the country. Jerry Rawlings has never made any secret of his disdain for law and order, democratic governance, or constitutional rule. Read:The Impudence Of a Cockroach
Its in that climate that one has to understand how Ghana Airways and Sobel Air lines 'thrived / throve'. It is here that airlines as MK Airlines get their licenses
Flight-Lieutenant Jerry John Kwasi Rawlings (22 June 1947 - Place of Birth - Accra, Catholic, his father was a Scottish Officer).regi wrote:Although it is based in the UK, MK Airlines' fleet of planes is registered in Ghana. The air cargo firm has been operating since 1990.
La Commission nationale de réconciliation (NRC)
L’étrange destin de Jerry Rawlings