Businesses could help fund airport fog navigation systems
LAST Tuesday my fellow passengers and I got on a flight from London for Guernsey, less than an hour's run. We arrived by ship on Friday, nearly three days later. While Aurigny did their best to get us here earlier, Guernsey-bound planes just can't land in fog. The frustration and lost time resulting from this round of fog was suffered by thousands of us who live and work in Guernsey. There was also a human cost, with ruined vacations and missed family contact when it was most needed. Students and seniors were hurt. I was more fortunate as my travel was for business – essentially to encourage more of it to come to Guernsey. Yet that is less likely to happen when clients rightly feel uncertain of their access to the island, or whether they can rely on us to turn up for meetings. Any shortcoming in the airport's navigation system, preventing planes from landing in fog, is costing Guernsey business.
Rather than continuing to accept the status quo, it may be much less expensive for Guernsey's business community to initiate the funding of the advanced system. Guernsey has a rich tradition of doing this, with the initial funding of the Market Buildings over 200 years ago by those Guernsey's businesses that needed a better route to markets.
The fog is not going away. Let's bring voluntary funding to the top of the international business community's agenda. It has been done before and needs to be done now.
DAVID S. ROSS,
Address withheld.
