Travel restrictions in other countries to affect Ghana’s international traffic - Aviation expert

International travels underperforming, Aviation expert

Emirates reopens flights to Ghana

Domestic travel market bounced back extremely well in 2021-Expert

An aviation analyst, Sean Mendes, has lamented the constant imposition of travel bans facing the aviation sector will forestall Ghana’s chances of bouncing back to pre-pandemic levels.

According to him, international travel traffic is still not at its best levels despite the sector’s strong domestic performance in 2021.

In an interview with Citi Business News, Mr. Mendes said “even though we don’t have full compliments of relevant data, I think the domestic sector in Ghana bounced back extremely well in 2021. It looks like Ghana has exceeded passenger levels for 2019. That shows that the domestic market has rebounded completely. International travel is however at around 65% of where it was in 2019.”

The United Arab Emirates had in the latter part of December 2021, banned all travels from Ghana among some other African countries over fears of the Omicron variant of the Coronavirus.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs however listed some strict testing measures to be taken to convince the government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to lift its travel restrictions on travellers from Ghana to the UAE.

On the road to recovery of the Ghanaian economy, the economist noted that, “I think we’ll probably see this recovering in the second half of 2022, but 2022 will still be below the 2019 numbers. The recovery is slow and steady, and unfortunately, while Ghana has been very consistent in its protocols for entry and for travel unfortunately international travel takes two countries, so if one country has restrictions then traffic numbers will be low."