Runway is on a wing and a prayer
NO SURPRISE that plans for the most expensive option for a runway extension and a brand new terminal and associated facilities at Alderney Airport are going to be taken to the States.
Enthusiasm for Option C+, the most expensive of those on the table, has been effusive from Alderney and the relevant Guernsey authorities for a while. But it makes challenging reading, given the price tag, double the estimate for a more basic project originally approved in 2019.
Alderney States member Steve Roberts makes an impassioned defence for the £24m. proposal on this page. Is Alderney ‘in the last chance saloon’?
Clearly Guernsey won’t want to cut Alderney off. But the repeated assertions that a £24m. investment will save both islands money in the long run sounds a bit of a gamble, and one with a very long payback at that, and a strategy of ‘build it and they will come’ – the very argument that some would use, and others would decry, for extending the runway in Guernsey.
Arguing that such an investment into Alderney’s infrastructure will do wonders for Aurigny’s bottom line seems plausible, but also feels hard to swallow.
This will be a tough call for States members. At a time of looming financial crisis, and while the Guernsey project has been assessed as ‘not a priority’, maybe this scheme is coming in on a wing and a prayer.