Why Ghana has banned a single Delta Boeing 767-300 plane from its skies

Countries banning planes is fairly common; just look at the refusal of many European states to allow Russian aircraft in their airspace over the invasion of Ukraine.

In some cases airlines are deemed unsafe, or have had too many crashes or investigations.

What is rare, however, is an entire country specifying that a single plane cannot enter its airspace. That's exactly what Ghana has done to one Delta Air Lines aircraft, a 767-300 with the registration code N195DN.

This specific plane has been used recently on the New York, US to the Ghanaian capital, Accra, route, but it seems that the African country's patience with the 25-year-old aircraft has run out after a series of faults and delays.

In a letter to the US airline, which was published in local media, the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) reported that N195DN suffered a "fuel imbalance" issue on July 31 and August 1.

It followed another problem days earlier: "This was the same aircraft that had to return to JFK on 25th July, 2022 a few hours after take-off from JFK and which was widely reported on in various media outlets."

In fact, it was the second time in two days that this particular plane had to return mid-flight due to a mechanical issue, reports aviation blog One Mile At A Time.

The letter from GCAA added that, "it was expected that after such negative reportage, Delta Airlines would have thoroughly investigated the issue to arrive at the root cause of the failure before dispatching the aircraft on flights".

"Rather, the aircraft was flown within the United States a number of times and then dispatched again to Accra, only for the problem to reoccur.