Guernsey Press

Runway ‘rehab’ riddle

Here’s a teaser for you. When does rehabilitating a runway actually mean Guernsey taxpayers spending about £50m. building a brand new airport? When the Civil Aviation Authority decides Alderney’s airstrip needs to grow up, says Richard Digard

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‘The Alderney Airport pavement rehabilitation project’ is part of a costed £80m. ‘must-do’ list of 11 projects in the Government Work Plan. There are suggestions that widening Alderney’s runway will morph into having to create a brand new £50m.-ish entire replacement airport, to the detriment of some of the other 10 ‘must-do’ projects.

WHEN folk are queuing up to give the States a kicking for being the ‘worst ever’ – something this one has so far avoided, but then it’s yet to impose GST on already cash-strapped islanders facing a cost of living and energy* crisis – it is easy to ignore an inconvenient truth. Managing even a small place like this is exceptionally complex, with interleaved and often conflicting demands.

Let me give you a live example. It’s based on what Policy & Resources treasury lead Mark Helyar referred to here last week as ‘the Alderney Airport pavement rehabilitation project’. Part, apparently, of a costed £80m. ‘must-do’ list of 11 projects bannered under the Government Work Plan.

‘Rehabilitate’ sounds so benign, doesn’t it? Almost like running repairs. But there are factors at work here that suggest widening Alderney’s runway will actually morph into having to create a brand new £50m.-ish airport (at Guernsey’s expense) to the detriment of some of the other 10 ‘must-do’ projects Deputy Helyar mentioned.

Yes, you read that correctly.

An entire replacement airport.

The reason for that is essentially down to the Civil Aviation Authority. Any changes or modifications have to be certified, which is an extremely technical and complex process, unsurprisingly aimed at ensuring the safety of aircraft passengers and crew, visitors, staff and those living next to the airport.

Yes, Alderney is certificated now but is in a sweet-spot of minimal rules and regs. Flying in comparatively light aircraft with no more than 19 passengers at a time means it’s all pretty relaxed – you can park right outside and not have your luggage scanned (just as well, as Alderney doesn’t have a scanner). Scale up operations, even a bit, and regulatory hell breaks out.

What also makes this such a good illustration of the inherent complexities of juggling priorities and limited resources is the number of other agencies involved – P&R, the States’ Trading Supervisory Board, Aurigny and some possible external airlines, the potential of ‘green’ aviation and the 1948 post-war agreement between Alderney and Guernsey. That, although supposedly temporary, continues to underpin the relationship between the islands and Guernsey’s obligations to its neighbour.

Add to that some raw politics – unlike the last P&R/government, this one loves Alderney to bits, while the States of Alderney itself has a bit of clout, plus issues with Aurigny and its past (alleged) mistreatment of northern residents and businesses.

So you can see it’s a turbulent path ahead of any safe landing.

What makes it especially problematic is the reason for this particular runway work: Aurigny wants to sell the Dorniers, which it should never have bought in the first place, and instead service Alderney using its ATR-72s. But they can’t land there because they’re way too big.

The current Tarmac runway is 877 metres long and 18 wide and good to go ‘as is’ with airport, fire and tower and other facilities for commercial aircraft such as Islanders, Trislanders, Dorniers and Twin Otters, plus many others up to a maximum passenger capacity of 19 people.

I believe third-party operators including Air Alderney and SkyBus (which operates to the Scilly Isles and serves a similar population to Alderney) are interested in subcontracting Alderney services using smaller aircraft and thus with no runway work needed.

However, the current thinking is that Aurigny should continue, which means extending and widening the runway.

That would be to 1,100 metres and the runway would also have to be widened to 30 metres. In addition, my understanding of the CAA rules is that the existing runway would also need to be strengthened with re-specified lighting and significant additional drainage, effectively simply to facilitate Aurigny’s larger ATRs.

As a further twist, I’m told by those in the know that the ATR-72s can’t land on such a short runway fully laden because they were never designed to do so. So instead of operating at an optimum 72 passengers they would be restricted to perhaps half that number, seriously damaging profitability – the very thing Aurigny is trying to improve by selling the Dorniers.

As you’ll appreciate, there’s a lot more detail behind all this – plus the intriguing possibility that the delegated authority given by the States to P&R to progress the Government Work Plan means it could press ahead with all this in the absence of a further States debate.

Anyway, as best as you can work out from the CAA rule book, the additional safety requirements implied by such a runway extension and widening include additional perimeter security fencing, new terminal buildings and car-parking, scanner and baggage management (on Guernsey’s recent experience, that’s £6m. alone), fire station repositioning, strengthening taxiway and aircraft parking, control tower rebuild and re-equip, plus extra land required for the runway extension itself. There may also be more requirements, including re-rated additional fuel storage and management.

That said, the CAA has the authority to apply special exemptions under exceptional circumstances, which would need to be negotiated, but is a further indication of the complexity of these things.

I mentioned earlier that Deputy Helyar’s ‘rehabilitation’ project had the potential to derail others on the ‘must do’ list – including Guernsey’s own runway extension – and the reason is simple. Cost.

Again, as best as I can gather from a number of sources, the price for all this is around £50m., while the Government Work Plan is budgeted at £80m.

Clearly, something’s going to have to give.

There are several other aspects too. An outfit developing uber-green hydrogen-fuelled Islander aircraft is keen to fly to Alderney on the existing runway without modification and the 1948 agreement implies (at best) an obligation on Guernsey to maintain the then-existing runway – certainly not to replace it.

So if your head’s in a tailspin after wading through all this, spare a thought for our poor deputies and officials who have to decide what’s best for the Bailiwick.

Use predominantly Guernsey taxpayer money to extend Alderney’s runway and build a new airport so Aurigny can offload its dud Dorniers, without any business case justifying that ‘investment’ or legal obligation to do so – or invite a rival airline to provide the same level of service on the existing airstrip?

Tricky stuff, government, eh?

* Previous columns on the absence of any roadmap to transition to zero-carbon refer.