UK Consultants York Aviation were commissioned by the Policy Council in February to cast a critical eye over the various options for refurbishing and/or extending Guernsey’s airport runway.

A by-product – and possibly the most valuable consequence – of its involvement has been to highlight two things: the lifeline role played by the airfield and the island’s utter reliance on a direct link to Gatwick for its prosperity.

As York Aviation puts it, the island is heavily dependent on air service connections and these have been of critical importance in sustaining tourism and attracting business in the financial and insurance sectors.

In turn, these sectors contribute to high average earnings, giving Guernsey one of the highest gross domestic products per capita in the world.

Holding on to the companies that pay high wages is vital because income tax is now the primary source of revenue for funding public services.

What York Aviation’s research has neatly highlighted is the vulnerability of the island’s chief source of prosperity – and it is doubly exposed.

Attempts to make the airport more expensive to use by increasing charges runs the risk of reducing passenger demand, because of extreme price sensitive, and thus leading to airlines withdrawing capacity, making Guernsey less attractive as a visitor and business destination.

The need to avoid that is such, according to York Aviation, that the benefits from Guernsey Airport ‘justify some level of support to be gifted by the States’.

It is a rather coy way of putting it, but the report’s findings are actually saying that the island as we know it is hanging by a thread and anything that makes the airport a less attractive destination – either through cost or difficulty of access for landing – will cause that thread to break.

While that is unthinkable, the value of the airport and its air links is not part of the government psyche and ministers would rather spend on pet projects than ensure the vitality of our lifeline link.

Yet the reality is that in a straight run-off, subsidising the airport makes more sense than rebuilding Les Beaucamps School. The risk is, that won’t be understood until it is too late.