To solve the problem of how many times the letter "a" appears in the word "banana," we will follow the outlined requirements step by step.

### Step 1: Analyze the Problem Requirements
The problem requires us to determine the frequency of the letter "a" in the word "banana." This involves:
- Identifying the word we are analyzing, which is "banana."
- Understanding that we need to count occurrences of a specific character, which is "a."

### Step 2: List the Steps to Solve the Problem
To solve the problem, we can break it down into the following steps:
1. Identify the word we are analyzing.
2. Initialize a counter to keep track of the occurrences of the letter "a."
3. Loop through each character in the word.
4. For each character, check if it is equal to "a."
5. If it is, increment the counter.
6. After checking all characters, provide the final count.

### Step 3: Execute the Solution Process
Now, let's execute the steps we have outlined:

1. **Identify the word**: The word is "banana."
2. **Initialize a counter**: We will set a variable, `count`, to 0. This will hold the number of times we find "a."
   ```python
   count = 0
   ```
3. **Loop through each character**: We will iterate over each character in the string "banana."
   ```python
   for char in "banana":
   ```
4. **Check if the character is "a"**: Inside the loop, we will check if the current character (`char`) is equal to "a."
   ```python
   if char == 'a':
   ```
5. **Increment the counter**: If the condition is true, we will increment the `count` by 1.
   ```python
   count += 1
   ```
6. **Final count**: After the loop, we will have the total count of "a" in "banana."

Putting it all together in code:
```python
word = "banana"
count = 0

for char in word:
    if char == 'a':
        count += 1

final_count = count
```

### Step 4: Provide the Final Answer
After executing the above code, we find that the value of `count` is 3. Therefore, the letter "a" appears **3 times** in the word "banana."

### Conclusion
Through this step-by-step process, we analyzed the problem, outlined the necessary steps, executed the counting logic, and arrived at the final answer: **3**.