Today in History: A commissioned French flight crew nearly landed Mills on an abandoned runway, according to Anyidoho.
Koku Anyidoho, a close associate of Ghana's late former President John Evans Atta Mills, described an incident that occurred in 2009 while working for his former boss.
He described a near-disaster that occurred while the former president was on his way to Tamale.
This involved a flight with a French-speaking crew, according to Koku Anyidoho.
The following is the full original story, which was first published by GhanaWeb on Wednesday, September 29, 2022:
In 2009, the late former president, John Atta Mills, was on a chartered flight from Accra to Tamale that nearly ended in disaster due to the crew's lack of familiarity with the route.
This is according to Koku Anyidoho, who served as the Director of Communications under the former president, the crew, of a French-speaking origin, nearly dropped the president on an old and abandoned runway due to their unfamiliarity with the route.
In an interview on Okay FM on Wednesday, September 29, 2021, and monitored by GhanaWeb, he explained how the late former president preferred using chartered flights instead of the country’s presidential carrier, the Falcon.
“President Mills preferred traveling commercial because with the Falcon, when traveling long haul, you’d have to stop and refuel, and all that comes with costs. A lot of these things don’t have to do with the individual and his individual approach to the whole thing.
“President didn’t find it too appropriate that when traveling to places like the US, Canada, we should use the Falcon because of the number of times you’d have to stop and refuel,” he said.
Koku Anyidoho was commenting on the ongoing conversation about the government’s intention to procure a new presidential aircraft.
While speaking about why he fully subscribes to that plan, Koku explained the intriguing circumstances that surrounded what he says was the first trip by President John Evans Atta Mills after he took office in 2009.
“President Mills’ first local trip when he became president was to Tamale and when we got to the Kotoka International Airport, they said there was the plane and then the president got in. And on that trip, we had Cletus Avorka, in terms of ministers; I was on it myself.
"And then we said we were going to Tamale; they had gone somewhere to rent a plane, whereas the Airforce was there." They were two young pilots from somewhere, and they couldn't even speak English; they were speaking French. We were flying around in the sky for 45 minutes on a trip that was supposed to last 45 minutes, and people began murmuring, wondering what was going on.
"And then we started descending, and at that point, we started smelling the burning aviation fuel." We began to descend, unaware that there was an abandoned runway from Nkrumah's time and that these boys were going to land the president there. We then had to start directing them on where to land and where not to land,” he said.
He added that it was that day that the Ghana Airforce decided that going forward, no trip of the president would be taken without their involvement, even if they were not the ones directly flying the Number One man.
"That was the day the Airforce decided that never again would the Commander-in-Chief make any flight out of the country without their concern, even if it was commercial," he explained.
blogpay
Total Comments: 0