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The President of IMANI Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe is campaigning against government acquisition of a new national airline this year. He is of a view that government must abort its decision to invest in a national airline until the country's ailing economy is fixed. According to him, for a nation which is in discussions with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for an economic bailout to consider refurbishing its national airline following two failed attempts, �points to a lack of priority.� The Policy Think-tank boss took to Facebook to give reasons why he believes government's decision to purchase a new airline is wrong. Read Franklin�s view below [Unedited] Further reasons Government SHOULD NOT resurrect the overly failed national airline. An expert opinion 1. Partnership 49 � 51 not realistic The only asset (against the huge disadvantage of political involvement) for the future partner would be exclusivity on routes. GHANA DOESN'T HAVE THEM! 2. Not realistic the state of Ghana can�t keep up with the potential investor without attracting loans! 3. New airlines, these days are offering a �niche� in the existing markets such as; Virgin Low price Ryan air High quality Emirates Good routes Turkish Exclusive rights KLM What does the new airline has to offer? 4. The strength of the old �Ghana Airways� was exclusivity and part exclusivity Amsterdam- Accra, London-Accra, Zurich Accra etc. That exclusivity is gone, only KLM and SAA still have some �codeshare Ghana-airways� chairs on each flight because the contract hasn�t expired yet. 5. The largest problem is that income visitors are spread over a lot of countries in the EU, US and far and middle-East, so where do you load your customers? Are you going to fly to UK or Holland or Germany? 6. You can�t do them all, and when you decide on one, all the existing airlines will immediately drop their fares on that route only and you as a newcomer have to compete with a large number of competitors who can recuperate their losses on other routes (and you can�t). 7. The strength of the old Ghana Airways was also in supplying transit passengers to Accra who fly to other west-African countries. The famous route from Abidjan stopping like a bus to the Canary Islands was an asset because nobody else was flying there, the same to Lome, Lagos and Gabon on the other end. 8.That advantage is gone, because we have A-SKY in Lome flying to all ECOWAS capitals and the Nigerians flying all over west Africa already. On top of that some of the world players; SAA, Delta, Kenya Airways, Turkish Airways are also have several other west-African capitals as stop over on the same flights to and from Ghana. 9.The local market is impossible (unless you want to push out private business with government money) all local airlines are losing money and only a monopoly could make money, but even that against much higher cost for the travellers and won�t be viable on the long term. 10. I see only 2 possibilities but both will be very difficult to develop as well; A. Destinations Asia and South America. Reason only Brazil currently as a direct flight available through Ethiopian/ASKY and Hong-Kong or Malaysia because there are no existing flights. On both routes Ghana could claim its exclusive rights and there would not be much competition! But the disadvantages are; small number of existing customers and hardly �overseas Ghanaians� a large group of customers! (Maybe up to 50%). B. The second possibility; Low cost Airline Interesting for Ghanaians and their friends travelling home, students etc. destinations 3 to 5 to largest concentrations of Ghanaians in EU and US. This airline could be used in attracting back-pack/Eco/ adventure tourism! Can this airline keep its cost and quality under control? Because the chances of success stand or fall with that. There are also the normal questions; Work and especially service mentality and mindedness Past mistakes, fraud, favoritism, government and officials �free use� and abuse of the future airline.