obstacles, St Helena and "Yes Minister"
Dear All
Non-ideal approach and departure?
Re my St Helena posts elsewhere ad nauseam. I thought that the St Helena airport had been sussed but I reckoned without consultants.
First GxC Lxd, then Atxxxs and good old ASSI who reneged on its promises. Our only potential inward investor spent £2M + recceing the island with a view to safe flying with especial regard to Diana's Peak, the Barn and Great Stone Top. Obstacles that with due care and attention actually define the aerodrome patterns and alignments as opposed to the Civil Service obsession with minimising construction effort whilst maximising danger. And then calling that value for money. To cap it all when industry professionals say "That is dangerous" rather than reverting to the original plan these stuffwits say, "Oh! Very well, we'll bolt on an extra 300metres of RESA for you to have your accident in; and dynamite the top off that hill you are so worried about!" Sheesh you can imagine the cost has tripled. Obviously they don't want us to have an airport so we daily expect the USN to do a Diego Garcia on us! (Just joking).
The outcome of the investor's study given perennial trade winds was that one alignment (I'll call it the Peaks) was inadmissable for landing on 3 deg slope and inadvisable for both mist and, (yes and), turbulence. However it was a beaut for take-off. On the other hand a runway almost perpendicular to this alignment, though shorter, was good for approach and overshoot.
ASSI agreed a deviation was appropriate for RESA length on the grounds that analysis of B737 class aircraft runway end excursions neither needed nor justified the excessive earthworks for greater length. Indeed if by shortening available runway length to construct ramparts worthy of Edinburgh Castle made the consequences of runway excursions more difficult for RFF services to tackle.
But the delays imposed by colonial mandarins who have a vested interested in not being shown in the wrong have effectively enforced a potentially unsafe compromise that could kill off the project.
Through the very kind intervention of the three top A320 product line bods I managed to send an unsolicited appraisal to DfID which vindicated the investor's ideas and backed up the similar conclusions of Boeings airport engineers. Presumably being a backward native islander with a bone through my nose and only several 1000's of hours makes no difference. Filed in wastepaper basket.
If eventually pilots over 55 eventually fly into what is at present the putative airport and I am one of them at least I shall be able to reply to the question "Who thought up this blxxdy stupid approach?" Gennelmen, if they do build an airport on Prosperous Bay Plain St Helena it will be on an unsatisfactory alignment at an inappropriate cost with potentially dangerous plates precisely because the Colonial Administration cannot lose face by admitting that they have wasted time and money. I don't know what J_T and O_S make of that but I'd be happy to expand in private in the hope that we may still avoid catastrophe 2000nm from major trauma surgery.
A murrain on the hides of the Men from the Ministries expecially the Department for Idle Dunces and the Campaign Against Aviation. CASA and ASA ain't so bad after all.
Regards E