This is a fine mess you've got me into...
Well, the thick end of a quarter of a billion spent and what have we got for it? A lavish airport terminal, fancy control tower and 14km of new road but only virtual aircraft arriving and departing at the moment.
I feel sorry for Basil Read - they have, it seems to me, performed a minor miracle of civil engineering, 8 million cu m of rock blasted and shifted into Dry Gut and the buildings and infrastructure built - all done with a supply chain extending over a couple of thousand miles and with several weeks lead time. A logistical masterpiece. All this perhaps spoilt by now being associated with what could become a white elephant.
It seems there has been some bad decisions made of a fundamental nature regarding the exact location of the runway. Perhaps the solution would be to spend another £100m and fill in the rest of Dry Gut to make the runway longer. You could chop off the tops of the King and Queen rocks which would probably make the turbulence/windshear less. (I'm joking, of course!)
There is now talk about keeping the RMS St Helena running. Well, the airport could be used with smaller aircraft (possible using runway 02 and accepting the tailwind penalty), so perhaps a weekly service would just about replicate the passenger capability of the RMS. This would allow the all important access for Saints to get to and from the island. The place is not really ready for an increase in tourists anyway, so instead of the £5m per annum subsidy going to the RMS, why not, in the short term, run some charter flights as an RMS substitute?
Of course, the heavy cargo element of the RMS needs to be covered - hopefully the new wharf at Ruperts and associated infrastructure will soon be available to allow new shipping arrangements to commence.