Delta reduces Ghana flights as Ebola damps West Africa travel

Delta Airlines Inc., the US carrier with the most service to Africa, is cutting flights to Accra, Ghana, by about 20 percent amid an industry pullback in nearby countries because of the Ebola outbreak.

The third-biggest US airline would not say  whether the epidemic in West Africa was turning away consumers. Airlines including British Airways and Emirates have cited the virus in cancelling trips to the hardest-hit regions, which do not include Ghana.

Round trips between New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and Accra’s Kotoka International Airport were pared to 18 in November from 22 a year earlier, said Anthony Black, a spokesman. Delta cut one flight per week from the route starting in November and expects the reduced schedule to continue indefinitely, Black said.

Black didn’t cite a reason for the slackening interest in trips to Ghana, whose government cut its 2015 economic growth forecast to about half of this year’s estimates because of power shortages, a slumping currency and inflation. Ghana is outside the heart of the Ebola outbreak in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Delta’s Africa flights go to Johannesburg; Lagos, Nigeria; and Dakar, Senegal, along with Accra.

It stopped serving Monrovia, Liberia, in August. United Continental Holdings Inc, flies only to Lagos and American Airlines Group Inc has no African destinations.

US carriers have added new routes into the continent over the last decade only to retreat because of disappointing financial results or political turmoil.

United, for example, flew from Washington to Accra between 2010 and 2012 and pulled the flight because it failed to meet projections, said Rahsaan Johnson, a spokesman. The airline stopped flying into Cairo in 2011 when the Middle Eastern uprising reduced demand, he said.

Delta also stopped flying into Cairo and Abuja, Nigeria, in 2011 and 2012, respectively, according to Black.

“I would call it a measured success in the market,” Black said in an interview in October. “Ultimately, we’re going to fly where we expect to continue to be successful.”

Airlines filled 68.7 percent of their seats on Africa flights this year through September, the lowest share among six regions tracked by the International Air Transport Association trade group. A 1 percent gain in passenger traffic marked the smallest advance, according to IATA.

Africa poses significant challenges for U.S.-based airlines, so they must be creative to make money there, said Craig Jenks, an industry consultant with Airline/Aircraft Projects Inc. in New York. Among them, the high altitudes of major economic centers such as Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, hurt airplanes’ fuel efficiency.

Delta can fly to Dakar, located on the continent’s western edge, because it can use a shorter-range, narrow-body Boeing 757 instead of a less fuel-efficient wide-body aircraft, Jenks said.

Other challenges include widespread theft of customer luggage and company equipment and a prevalence of leisure travelers, said Bob Mann, the president of aviation consultant R.W. Mann & Co. in Port Washington, New York.

“There’s a large diaspora in the U.S., but it is exclusively visiting friends and relatives, very low-yielding traffic,” Mann said by phone. “You don’t get the typical business travel profile that really makes the route perform for a network carrier.”