Royal Jordanian Airlines to start flight schedules to Ghana by 2012

Royal Jordanian Airlines, the national carrier of Jordan, is looking to start schedule flights to Ghana and other parts of Africa by 2012.

The airline’s appetite for Africa is to make up for lost business elsewhere amid expectations that it will report a full-year loss in 2011.

The airline is struggling with the fallout from political turmoil in the wider Middle East and economic uncertainty in the US and Europe, as well as higher oil prices which is increasing the company’s cost of operations.

“The carrier, the first in the Middle East that ordered Boeing Co.’s 787 Dreamliner, plans to add destinations in East Africa-Kenya and Ethiopia-by the end of 2011, to be followed by Nigeria in early 2012 and Ghana later that year,” said Dow Jones news service citing its Chief Executive Officer Hussein Dabbas as saying in an interview on the sidelines of a World Economic Forum event recently held in Jordan.

Mr Dabbas told the publication that the Royal Jordanian is expected to see its first-half loss of $55 million (39 million Jordanian dinars) widen “slightly” for the whole of 2011, in a “tough year” that saw the carrier’s regional business severely affected by the political turmoil that swept some of its key markets such as Egypt and Syria.

By Ekow Quandzie