Written by Michael Sasso | From Bloomberg

Delta Air Lines Inc. (DAL), the U.S. carrier with the most service to Africa, is cutting flights to Accra, Ghana, by about 20 percent as the Ebola outbreak in nearby countries damps travel demand.

The third-biggest U.S. airline wouldn’t say yesterday whether the epidemic in West Africa was turning away consumers. Airlines including British Airways and Emirates have cited the virus in canceling trips to the hardest-hit regions, which don’t include Ghana.

Round trips between New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and Accra’s Kotoka International Airport were pared to 18 in November from 22 a year earlier, said Anthony Black, a spokesman. Delta cut one flight per week from the route starting in November and expects the reduced schedule to continue indefinitely, Black said.

Black didn’t cite a reason for the slackening interest in trips to Ghana, whose government cut its 2015 economic growth forecast to about half of this year’s estimates because of power shortages, a slumping currency and inflation. Ghana is outside the heart of the Ebola outbreak in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Delta’s Africa flights go to Johannesburg; Lagos, Nigeria; and Dakar, Senegal, along with Accra. It stopped serving Monrovia, Liberia, in August. United Continental Holdings Inc. (UAL) flies only to Lagos and American Airlines Group Inc. (AAL) has no African destinations.

U.S. carriers have added new routes into the continent over the last decade only to retreat because of disappointing financial results or political turmoil. United, for example, flew from Washington to Accra between 2010 and 2012 and pulled the flight because it failed to meet projections, said Rahsaan Johnson, a spokesman. The airline stopped flying into Cairo in 2011 when the Middle Eastern uprising reduced demand, he said.

Read more at Bloomberg