Experienced staff are a must for runway reconstruction

PLANES will be landing just hours after Lagan staff have worked on the runway, making employing specialists a must to ensure the safety of passengers, the airport contractor's contracts manager said yesterday.

Steven Turner will be staying in the island over the coming months to oversee the preliminary stages of the airport – including setting up compounds for the £80.4m. project's asphalt plants, offices and worker village – which he expected to be completed by the end of March.

He yesterday defended bringing in a maximum 149 people at the project's peak, saying runway work was of such a high importance that it would be wrong for inexperienced employees to take it on.

'Working on an operational runway you have to take into account that in a short space of time you're going to have aeroplanes landing on it,' said Mr Turner, who has overseen various airport projects since joining the company in 1996.