The West Africa aviation market remains underserved and requires sustained investment to fully realise the benefits of aviation for the region, Vaibhav Doshi, Chief Executive Officer of Vflyair Airline Co. Limited has said.

“There is a lot of space available in the West Africa market. Ghana in particular has a lot of potential. Though there are a lot of airline operators working here, there is still connectivity issues. This shows that the market is raw. We believe that there is still space,” he told AviationGhana in an exclusive interview.

The International Air Transport Association forecasts that Africa will be a market of 350million passengers by 2035, supporting 6.8million jobs and contributes US$80billion in Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

It is projected that passenger demand will average 5.7 percent annually within the next two decades. This presents enormous economic opportunities for countries on the continent.

However, investment has been low and political will to liberalize Africa’s airspace to tap into these benefits has been unsteady.

Mr. Doshi, said private airlines such as Vflyair has seen the potential in the Ghanaian market and is ready to operate both passenger and cargo service once their Air Carrier License (ACL) and Air Operator Certificate (AOC) are issued by the aviation sector regulator—the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA).

“We saw a gap over here which we have come to fill. We want to put Ghana on the Africa and world connectivity map. [When the approval is given by the CAA] we will operate A319 and A320s with dual class configuration. It will be a full service airline.

“We will be connecting Accra regionally initially to start with and later on, in partnership with the Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA), we plan to start charters to the Caribbean market and to connect the Far East to Ghana. We feel we will be ready by end of February 2021.”