By Lamin Cham
The newly established Banjul-based Fly Mid Africa yesterday brought together stakeholders to a two-day strategic review meeting of their first 60 days of operations.
The meeting, happening at the Coral Beach Resort in Brufut, is being attended by general sales agents or travel agencies, sales representatives from The Gambia and four other countries in the region.
In declaring the meeting open, FMA director general Bakary Nyassi, said the consultative approach is meant to bring all stakeholders on board with a view to strengthening on the gains and finding solutions to areas of weaknesses. “During these two days the commercial staff will guide us through an in-depth review of the company’s performances in the initial sixty-days of operations to see where performances are strong and where they are sluggish, where traffic growth is trending high and where growth is weak. We urge all participants to be uneconomical with information and ideas that will see performances grow high on all routes,” Mr Nyassi told the gathering.
Mr Nyassi disclosed that Fly Mid Africa has an objective to develop a new passenger -cargo airline based in Banjul, and positioning Banjul International Airport as a major regional hub and targeting cities in West and Central Africa, Europe and possibly the Americas in the long term; to develop a strong brand associated with high quality products and services.
Mr Nyassi further said FMA’s development strategy seeks to link West Africa to major hubs in the EU and North America to provide seamless connections for its traffic to and from the rest of the world. In this regard, London, Barcelona and New York are being studied for possible inclusion on 8G list of destinations in the medium term.
Fama Thioune, Sales Manager of Aviation and Co Avico in Dakar, said the market is happy with the introduction of Fly Mid Africa in Dakar because it means more flights to the region, Banjul, Freetown, Accra, Dakar etc. “It is a new alternative and offers attractive fares and people are getting to know about Fly Mid Africa and it’s is just two months old,” she said.
