Ghana’s airport authority is accused of defying a court injunction and forcing its way into a private aviation terminal in the early hours of Wednesday, removing equipment belonging to McDan Aviation just hours after being formally served with a legal order blocking any enforcement action.
McDan Aviation said it served the Ghana Airports Company Limited (GACL) with a motion for an interlocutory injunction on March 10, 2026. Despite the court process, it alleged that GACL officials entered Terminal 1 of Kotoka International Airport at approximately 1:00 a.m. on March 11 and removed valuable equipment and property from the facility.
GACL has not responded directly to the allegation of the midnight entry. In its own statement issued the same day, the airport authority said the Fixed Base Operation (FBO) agreement with McDan Aviation Handling Services Limited was formally terminated on January 16, 2026, following years of persistent non-payment of licence fees, royalties, and rent dating back to shortly after the agreement was signed in August 2022.
GACL said McDan Aviation submitted three post-dated cheques as part of a proposed payment plan but subsequently asked the authority not to deposit them, citing financial constraints. Terminal 1 was locked on February 9, and McDan Aviation made a payment equivalent to approximately US$265,000 on February 27, roughly half of the outstanding FBO debt, after the facility had already been closed.
The total debt claimed by GACL across all contracts with McDan Group, including terminal fees and separate land lease obligations, stands at nearly US$4 million. McDan Aviation disputes several components of the figure, particularly the land-related charges, which it says are subject to separate and unresolved court proceedings.
The core legal dispute now turns on a single clause. McDan Aviation says the agreement expressly required GACL to provide 90 days’ notice before any eviction, a requirement it says was ignored. “By failing to give the required period of notice, GACL has willfully violated this fundamental contractual requirement,” the company said. GACL has not addressed the 90-day notice argument in its public statements.
The company described the overnight operation as a deliberate attempt to collapse Ghana’s first indigenous Fixed Base Operation provider, and said it would pursue all available legal remedies including the contempt of court avenue.
GACL, for its part, warned other airport tenants that it would apply the same debt recovery approach to any business that fails to honour financial obligations, signalling that the McDan dispute is intended to set a precedent for commercial discipline across the airport’s tenant base.
