One of the world’s most remote islands has had to close its only airport. After a series of similar faults with its fire appliances were discovered.
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 South Africa.
This has happened just when the island was promoting the most remote marathon race on the island.
Marathon runners. Pic © Mathias Falcone
This emergency closure of the airport had to be taken. As the airport engineers firstly identified a problem with one of their 3 fire engines.
St Helena Airport Closed
The authorities then had to also look at the other two appliances. Where a similar faults were found in their gearbox pumps. So the decision was made to close the airport 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 Close St Helena Airport
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
Meanwhile other options are being talked about going forwar. Such as acquiring 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 restart.
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 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. A passenger and cargo ship that sailed from Portland to Ascension Island and then to St Helena.
