Four major airlines, namely British Airways, KLM, AirFrance, and Delta Air Lines have announced the ban of prekese, koobi, momone, and dawada from flights leaving Ghana.
The four airlines have all issued statements indicating that this action has become very necessary due to the increased number of emergency landings and cases they’ve had to undertake and attend to because of the pungent smell these foodstuffs and spices emit into the cabin.
The statements indicated that cabin crew members and some passengers can no longer endure the odour from the aforementioned foodstuffs, especially momone.
“Over the past years, we’ve seen these foodstuffs create deeply disturbing situations onboard aircraft. Let me be clear: British Airways will not tolerate any form of torture of our crews. We are in a pandemic and it has become very difficult to breathe when wearing a nose mask. It becomes problematic when we have to inhale the pungent smell these products emit as well,” Vice President of flight service for British Airways, Edward Walker said in an interview.
He continued, “While we understand that Ghanaian passengers travelling from Ghana are eager to send prekese, koobi, momone, and dawadawa to their various destinations (especially Europe and America) to spice up their foods, they should also bear with us that we need maximum concentration to perform our duties sawhere”.
In a memo issued by KLM, it cited an example whenn its flight KL589, travelling from Accra to Amsterdam on February 29, 2021, had to carry out an emergency landing in Dakar because the smell from one bag containing packs of momone and koobi had caused one of the flight’s engines to stop working.
It stated that “It has now become imperative that we ban such products from all our flights leaving Ghana with immediate effect. Any passenger who’ll be found carrying prekese, koobi, momone, or dawadawa will not be allowed to board our flight.”