World’s largest airline Delta Airlines Inc. on Sunday said that it would launch a new weekly service from its U.S. hub Atlanta to Monrovia, Liberia. It marks the first time in 20 years that a U.S. airline is planning to launch service to the West African nation recovering from more than a decade of civil war.
Delta said that the service would be weekly, with a layover in Accra, Ghana. The country had been mired in a 11-year civil war starting in 1989 after a coup by American-educated Charles Taylor. "Delta Airline's inaugural direct flight from Monrovia to the United States opens the sky over Liberia for business, forcommerce, for tourism, [and] for travel," Liberia President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said in a statement. Pan-Am was the last U.S.-based airline to offer service to the African country.