Wholly owned Ghanaian airline, Goldstar Air in collaboration with other airlines will be launching an airline alliance called Afrik Alliance to expand routes, share resources and establish seamless travel experience for international passengers who will get access to multiple destinations and more convenient airway connections.
According to the Executive Chairman of Goldstar Air, Eric Bannerman, the participating airlines will carry out mutually agreed commercial policies, coordinate scheduled flights, and ensure high quality of services and security standards. At the same time, will maintain a high degree of financial independence and preserve brand identity.
Afrik Alliance members may go into other forms of partnership, like a codesharing agreement or joint venture with other airlines, no matter whether they belong to our alliance. Member carriers can expand their networks without investing in new aircraft, instead, they offer new destinations and longer routes to their passengers by picking up and connecting existing partner flights.
To maintain lower operational costs, Afrik Alliance members will share resources and important facilities such as lounges, terminal space, ground handling services, maintenance bases, run common marketing programs and IT system which will reduce overall costs while still guaranteeing a consistent level of service.
And to maintain customer satisfaction, members of Afrik Alliance will work together to provide our passengers larger choice of destinations, flights and this will be particularly important for business travelers, who often have tight schedules and complex itineraries with multiple connections. By coordinating schedules, seamless travel experience, Afrik Alliance will reduce waiting and transfer time between flights, as well as take care of baggage and rebook passengers on other flights or provide alternative travel arrangements in case of delays or cancellations.
Afrik Alliance members will run individual frequent flier programs but passengers joining a member airline is empowered to earn and redeem miles across the entire network. Frequent flyers that sign up for programs of a member airline will be taking advantage of several benefits in return for their loyalty, including elite status, preferred seating, greater access to upgrades as well as more recognition from member airline, early boarding before most other types of passengers, with the notable exception of Business class passengers, and families with children. Another perk which our frequent flyers will enjoy is getting upgraded to the next level of service and this can be given for free at the carrier’s discretion for things like getting into an exit row, or even bumped up to the next cabin.
The Single African Air Transport Market is significant, as it aims to liberalise air transport services, therefore Afrik Alliance aims to facilitate intra-regional trade and regional integration by movement of goods, services, people and the establishment of multimodal transportation connecting every corner of over 121 airports within Africa and across other continents. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) has created largest free market in the world so Afrik Alliance will be connecting 1.3 billion people from 55 countries with a total GDP of $3.4 trillion and there is sufficient room for the establishment of many other aviation hubs to cater for the movement of people and goods.
It is promising that African countries are already strategizing on how to benefit from the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement and developing clear plans of action to take advantage of national, regional, and global markets in the AfCFTA context. The African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement can play a game-changing by taking advantage of Afrik Alliance role in Africa’s economic diversification and inclusion. This will be an opportunity for member countries to get involve to also make it a reality to sustain easy movement within the African continent.