Flights Were Cancelled Due To Bad Weather- Starbow

Starbow Airlines on Tuesday said its flights to Tamale on Monday the 16th and the Tuesday 17th December, 2013 were cancelled because of unfavourable weather conditions in Tamale. Mr James Eric Antwi, Chief Executive Officer of Starbow, told the GNA in an interview that the airline had been forced to cancel its morning flights from Accra to Tamale yesterday and today because visibility in Tamale had been below the safety requirement of 2600 metres. On Monday morning, visibility at Tamale had been at 2000m and had prevailed until 12.00 noon while visibility on Tuesday morning had been 1500m, prevailing until 11am, prompting the cancellation of the flights. �The visibility was below the legal requirement of 2600m; we had to cancel the flight. We did it in the interest of our customers and for their safety and we apologise for the inconvenience,� he stated, adding that it would resume morning flights to Tamale as soon as the weather improved. He also stated that passengers would be reimbursed for their ticket or their flights rescheduled. Addressing a related incident where a Starbow flight to Kumasi was cancelled on the evening of Saturday December 14th, 2013, Mr Antwi said that cancellation was due to a delay in servicing of the aircraft. He said the servicing of the aircraft had run a few minutes beyond schedule thus the cancellation of the flight. He noted that due to the unavailability of runway lights at the Kumasi airport, it would not have been possible to fly back to Accra had the flight not been cancelled. He said the airline was sorry about the inconvenience to passengers who were stranded at the Kumasi airport due to the cancellation. On the reaction of passengers to the cancellation and threats by some of them to drag the airline to court, Mr Antwi said although the airline was responsible for either rescheduling or reimbursing passengers in such cases, it was not obliged to provide accommodation for them.