St Helena Airport Regains Accreditation

One of the world’s most remote islands has had to close its only airport.  However, its now to reopen on Tuesday 17th February.

After a series of  faults with its three fire appliances airport engineers have worked not quite around the clock to get them servicable.

The South Atlantic island of St Helena which requires around a 4 to 5 hour hour flight to reach it. And is some 1,200 miles from the South African coast.

This closure happened just when the island was promoting the most remote marathon race on the island.

ST HELENA GOVERNMENT STATEMENT :

SHG is pleased to announce that today, 15 February, St Helena Airport has regained Category 6 accreditation for its firefighting capabilities and full operations can resume. This is down to the incredible hard work and long hours put in by the mechanics at the airport, supported by specialist engineers from Marcé.

Full commissioning tests have been undertaken with tender R1, which will be supported by Tender R3 and St Helena Fire and Rescue Service. The results have been accepted by the independent regulator, ASSI.

Repairs to tender R2 will continue, but do not affect accreditation. We continue to look at longer term replacement options, with the support of FCDO, to ensure better resilience.

The first Airlink flight will be on Tuesday, 17 February, subject to favourable weather.

VITAL TICKET INFO:

Tickets will NOT be sold for this flight, or for Saturday, 21 February. Those with pre-booked tickets specifically for these flights should travel as normal. The remaining seats will be used for repatriation and allocated based on length of delay.

Please do not contact Airlink or the Airport, Solomons (Travel Agency) will contact you with an update.

Bookings will reopen for Tuesday, 24 February and beyond in due course.

We would like to thank everyone for their patience, support and resilience through this challenging period.

Marathon runners. Pic © Mathias Falcone

This good news has been greeted by the islanders and those trying to reach this most remote of islands. This emergency closure of the airport had to be taken  as the airport engineers firstly identified a problem with one of their engines.

When St Helena Airport Closed

The authorities then had to also look at the other two appliances.   Where similar faults were found in their gearbox pumps. So the decision was made to close the airport on Friday 6th February for normal international passenger flights.

Without proper emergency fire fighting engines being able to deal with any incident. This meant that the airport could not satisfy airport operation regulations and operate at what is called Category 6 certification.

The St Helena Government appointed Mr Ian Todd as the role of Gold Commander.  In order to deal with the challenges that such a key decision was likely to throw up.

St Helena Airport closed currently. But ‘Airlink’ does provide the service to the South Atlantic island.

With the airport unable to continue to run passenger flights it also meant that there were going to be many issues to deal with.  Like,  health situations, general tourism and passengers being stuck in South Africa and also on the island itself.

The first priority was to get the fire engines repaired and back into service.

That in itself was not straight forward. As the vital spare parts required were located in Germany. And adding to the those logistics a communication outage with the German airline meant that the parts had to be hastily placed on the plane to London and then escorted in a diplomatic bag down to Johannesburg.

Once there, they were placed on a private plane along with specialist engineers and flown direct to the island.

Fire Engines On St Helena

However, it was still was able to take flights as it had support from the Island’s domestic fire service and could still operated as a Category 4 airport.

Dorset Fire and Rescue engine to cover domestic fires on St Helena in the South Atlantic.

Some years ago an engine from Dorset Fire and Rescue in the UK was taken out to the island to operate in and around the capital, Jamestown.

However, that also did allowed for  an emergency Medivac flight to take place too.

A private flight on Feb 13th has meant that 6 passengers were able to be repatriated from St Helena.

Currently its understood that the Island airport engineers plus the specialist ones are working long hours. All in order to get the fire engine and their gearboxes all back into service.

Critical to the St Helena Government and airport is to get all three engines working correctly.  In order  that they can deliver the fire fighting water flow rate required by the regulations of international airline and airport safety regulations.

Engineers Battle To Save Airline Link as St Helena Airport Closed

Meanwhile other options are being talked about going forward. Such as acquiring brand new engines.

The airline providing the regular service is Air Link.  And they have had to cancel all flights and bookings. They are hoping that as soon as the airport has clearance then the flights can then restart once again.

Although, there are likely to be some issues and as yet with no fixed start date they felt it best to cancel all bookings.

Mr Todd SHG Chief Secretary and Head of the Public Service

Mr Todd SHG Chief Secretary and Head of the Public Service said in an interview on the island, “Unfortunately they found similar problems in the other tender’s pump gearboxes and they were left with no choice but to inform the regulator that they could no longer operate at Category 6.

“ It became apparent that the airport would have to close for a period of time.”

In the past and for many years the island was serviced by the RMS St Helena.

The RMS ST Helena leaving Portland Port UK.

A passenger and cargo ship that sailed from Portland UK to Ascension Island and then on to St Helena. .

Cargo ships still service the island but generally now from Cape Town on the M/V Helena.