Originally Posted by
Kerosene Kraut
My point is this seems to be no place for some regular commercial airport. Wiki suggests strategic interests (Falklands) might have played a role. How viable can regular operations and some airport business case be down there?
The idea was to promote high end tourism seen with flights from both the UK/EU, and from South Africa (such as add-ons from holidays taken in CPT) plus operate a regular scheduled/mail/freight flight from RSA to replace the RMS mail ship which needed replacing sooner or later.
A start up airline Atlantic Star Airways was setting up a series of scheduled services from LGW using an AMS based TUI 737-800 with a reduced payload and some premium seating with a tech stop at Banjul planned. Marketing and ticket sales were commenced.
BA/comair ordered a new 737-800 with scimitars to operate planned services twice a week from both CPT and JNB and flew the first big jet test flights into St helena.
These flights as we know saw Comair find the 738 was now unsuitable for the weather/wind conditions found at the new airport against their own SOP's with it's runway as built.
Seems the saga is continuing....I have not heard that the Falklands or even Ascension have played any part in the airports opening problems.
except that wideawake cannot be used for commercial flight alternates