By Stephen Atta Owusu
I was
always skeptical about flying to Ghana on Turkish Airlines. Many
things have been said about the airline. It is commonly known that transit in Istanbul sometimes took
about 24 hours and passengers had to spend a night in a hotel. I also felt that
Turkey was so close to Iraq, and that the long standing dispute between
Iraq and the Turkish Kurds
could suddenly spark off terrorism which could affect planes flying from Turkey.
All these things frightened me and I always said
to myself never to fly Turkish Airlines. This year, at the time I was about to
travel to Ghana,
Turkish Airlines happened to have the cheapest rates of all the airlines I
checked. I was tempted and decided to give them a try.
A bit of facts about Turkey:
They have been trying hard to be counted among the developed countries of Europe and want to join the EU. They hype their
achievements and one of their prides is Turkish Airlines. They have
advertisements in major international media saying how good the Airline is and
the awards they have received.
Some major footballers in the world have appeared
on some of these ads. One popular and funny one pits Drogba against Messi in an
epic food battle featuring many exotic dishes served on the airline which you
are not likely to get on the Accra
journey. It is evident in my personal opinion that what they say in these ads
did not meet up with their services as I experienced when I travelled in their
aircraft to Ghana.
I get the impression that they have different and better services to the developed
world but poorer services to the third world.
Through inefficient management of the Airline or
absolute and deliberate corruption, Ghana Airways collapsed never to rise
again. Ghanaians have been travelling very much with airlines which are better
known to them, and these are: British Airways, KLM and Lufthansa. These
companies use huge aircrafts for long distance journeys. These are wide-bodied
passenger jet airliners.
The article will mainly be talking about Turkish
Airlines and the uncomfortable treatment meted out to passengers travelling to Ghana. In July
there was an urgent need for me to travel to Ghana. Since their rates were some
thirty percent lower than the next cheapest airline, I chose to travel with
them for the first time despite the mixed feelings and suspicions I have for
the airline. The plane left very early in the morning and we were to transit in
Istanbul. The
immigration process was simple and waiting period to board another plane to Accra was just three
hours.
