Airport project passed by States
Thursday 28th July 2011, 11:17AM BST.
STATES members have just passed the £80.4m. airport development project and appointed the preferred contractor Lagan Construction.
PSD minister Bernard Flouquet (pictured) addressed concerns about costs, namely the amount spent on professional fees – £8m. in total.
He said it was a major project and therefore all different elements needed to be assessed properly.
It was passed by 40 votes to 6.
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Why do we have to do all this work?
Have you seen this? http://www.oddee.com/item_93109.aspx
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Doesn’t the vote say it all. 40 votes to 6!
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Eggy: Who knows? maybe:
1. vanity
2. fear of being seen to be indecisive
3. runway extension by stealth
4. incompetence
5. power gone to their head
I think number two was the answer for quite a few in the States yesterday and today. Madness.
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Eggy Bread-
The problem is the surface quality, not the surroundings or location of the airport.
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Booh! And don’t dare States of Guernsey tax us islanders for a single penny extra to pay for it
Thumbs down
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Time for another march methinks,
let your voted one in each of your parishes know how you feel.
Give ‘em ‘L’.
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When reading the Billet d’Etat and then you reference the previous poster’s comment that since 1958 there have been 5 incidents the two do not gell!
‘…….if it can present a sufficiently robust case, based upon risk assessment, showing why a RESA shorter than 240 metres is acceptable.’ bla bla.
So why could we Guernsey not present a risk assessment showing that 240m was not essential… go figure cause I sure as hell do not accept that all was done to not provide a 240m length piece of grass that is rubbish at actually truely stopping an aircraft and all we have done is move any potential incident nearer to housing and a main arterial road.
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Grass is not rubbish at stopping aircraft, Why would airports have grass RESAs if that was the case? It should be remembered that of all aircraft incidents, most, but not all, happen at airports. However, of these, only a small percentage venture into the RESA. And those that do are going at quite a slow speed.
However, we KNOW that PSD did not seek to establish the shortest length of RESA that would be acceptable to the CAA. For this failing alone they should be sacked.
Instead the motion is passed with much misgiving on the part of quite a few, simply because, after Suez, there is little appetite not to.
It is appalling.
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I am up for a march on this one. Just tell me when. I believe that if most islanders knew the full facts of the case the would be unhappy.
Congratulations to the six deputies with the courage of their convictions and shame on the sheep who had serious misgivings but voted with the flock.
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A very important fact has been overlooked during the debate on Guernsey Airport’s runway.
The usable runway length of the airport is actually considerably longer than is required for the aircraft currently flying to Guernsey and there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that that situation will need to change in the future.
Therefore, to increase the safety areas of the runway, one could simply, and safely, shorten the runway to what is really needed and save literally tens of millions of pounds.
But I suspect there are a few well off, connected people who would lose out on small fortunes should such a practical, realistic and much more economical step be taken.
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Alvin, It was not overlooked, it was one of the original 4 options, but unfortunately when you ask interested parties whether they want more, the same, or less of anything, the answer is always more.
As with the incinerator, the only thing that will stop this project from happening in its current overblown form and cost is the people of Guernsey taking to the streets. Who wants to be the organiser?
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This is madness shame on you Deputies that have voted for the redevelopment of the Airport, voted through without planning permission. Financially where is the 81 million + and I say + as there will be extra cost for this runway coming from I hope Deputies your not expecting the tax payer for this. Decisions are being made to easily you Deputies are not thinking of how this is going to affect every household in Guernsey . As for the importation of outside workers coming to work on this project has anyone thought that Guernsey & Jersey combined can manage this project without importing outsiders.
Oggi
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The scale of this project is daft. No-one argues that the runway is in need of maintenance and in the process, resurfacing, improved drainage and a grooved surface will all go towards making an already very safe runway even safer.
The idea that we need to also move the whole caboodle westward in order to increase the safety run-off areas even more, at a cost of tens of millions of pounds seems to be utter madness. It might be understandable if lives were being lost up there but they are not. The money would be better spent on health or education- that really would save and improve the quality of peoples lives.
To be so extravagant with both our money and our very limited land space at a time of such economic and environmental uncertainty is not a clever move.
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Now that the airport project has all these millions available, I wonder if they might spend a few hundred pounds of it sensibly and make a proper job of the silly airport road junction?
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j jones is right. Option D, with a shorter runway and 135m RESAs (50% more than the mandatory minimum), fitted within the existing boundaries. It was based on my submission to the PSD in December 2008. My sketch was never intended to show ‘a solution’, it was supposed to be the catalyst for some lateral thinking. The idea was to encourage the PSD to invert the design process. That is, start with what we have and work outwards rather than imagine a regional airport then see how it could be shoe-horned into this small island. What the 2011 Mott MacDonald report confirmed is that if the PSD had taken the correct design approach, with risk-assessments as a primary tool, we might well have ended up with shorter RESAs therefore considerably less expense and environmental damage.
It should be remembered that the whole £80 million is being funded from general revenues. A few months ago the PSD managed to duck out of funding £30million as a loan by proposing to saddle marina users rather than airport users with the repayments.
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That would have been a realistic position to have started the design process from and I suspect had that forward thinking been adopted by all we would not be in this mess that we are today.
Reading the PSD presentation, option D has the following comment under it.
‘RESA’s not acceptable to regulator and revised LDA too short for Flybe (Q-400’s in wet, E195)’
Whilst the comment about the Q-400s in the wet perhaps has some value, the not acceptable to regulator has to be queried.
I can’t actually remember the last time I landed facing East either.
One has to question has a risk assessment actually been done on the proposed RESA displacement west, this brings it very much closer to housing and right on the edge of a main arterial road.
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Shane Langlois / Guern abroad,
Like it or not, Flybe are the main commercial user of our airport, could we afford to risk them being unable to get their Q400s in (or out) under certain adverse conditions?
I think not!
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Maybe what is needed in this whole debate is a whistle blower someone who knows exactly what goes on behind closed doors, someone who can expose serious flaws in this long running and over inflated project, someone who really knows who are the puppets and who are really pulling the strings….. States Members and Airport Management, hang your heads in shame, as the realisation of what you have done will become evident for future generations to see!
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Wrong specification therefore a poor decision will lead to a waste of tax payers money. Guernsey does need an runway upgrade but if you don’t define the scope properly within clear objectives then this is the outcome.
These professional politicians continue to provide a poor service and performance, maybe the old system which provided a more conservative and less wasteful approach.
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kevin
As I said the sketch which led to Option D was never intended to be ‘the solution’.
Most of the focus has been on the West end but the main weakness is at the East end where we have a RESA length barely at the 90m minimum. Shifting the runway 40m West, rather than the proposed 120m, and incorporating the land up to La Mare Road would have resulted in a runway of the current length with 120m RESAs at each end. That would have given a good baseline design to work from and adjust after risk-assessments and consideration of the trade-off between RESA & runway lengths.
Only if this initial design process had indicated a necessity should we have contemplated the expense of shifting the runway further West and infilling the head of the valley West of the airport. We would also have been able to assess more accurately the comparative costs of such work against, say, an FAA/CAA compliant EMAS solution at the East end which would have fitted neatly into the 120m available in the baseline design.
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Shane, that is what I have been thinking, gain 120m at each end and have the flexibility to incorporste EMAS if a risk assement at a later date proved it essential.
Not the proposed project PSD have gone for.
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What a pity that, what Shane Langlois had suggested, was based on ‘common sense’.Which meant that the majority of the States were unable to understand exactly what he was saying !
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why is flouquet so determined to put the island in debt?? 1st the incinerater now the runway. Is he an IMF economic hit man??
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I have my banner ready – let’s start a protest – we should be able to vote on this project as it affects us all and the money will come from us ratepayers again. Our parliamentary ‘bodies’ have forgotten that they need to tighten their purse strings and are on a spending spree again. More debt, we will be like the EU in a very short time – bankrupt!
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One of the reasons this project was passed is that many States members understand it for exactly what it is – a runway extension by stealth. Once it is done, all that will be needed is for an application to be made to reduce the RESA at the eastern end by half and, hey presto, a longer runway! Nothing has ever run off the eastern end so it should not be difficult to make a good case.
One States member was actually heard to say: “what would be so bad about a longer runway anyway?” Well here are a few answers: (1) It is costing us an arm and a leg at a time when we are just a bit short of cash (2) A longer runway will mean that flybe or its successors can bring in larger aircraft and save money by operating less frequently, so choice of travel time to Gatwick and Southampton could be reduced, and (3) More large private jets will be able to use the runway – as I have said previously, I am not enamoured with my taxes subsidising multi-millionaires.
Do not think for a moment that Guernsey has a catchment anywhere near the size needed to have flights to various holiday destinations – indeed another deputy was heard to say “You have to remember, the airport is not for the benefit of the ordinary people of Guernsey, it is for the finance industry” I was open-mouthed with shock at this.
There is still time to change this if people really want to. It does not have to start from scratch, it could just revert to the option suggested by Shane Langlois and still be undertaken by the same contractor. Don’t forget there is an election next year. If you are not happy – do something! – at the very least email all deputies and write to the press which gets a bigger audience than this blog.
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Guern Abroad,
The fact that you cannot remember landing facing East unfortunately does not make an argument. The Easterly (09) runway is in use around one-third of the time, so it is relevant.
I am a figures person – they give me comfort – and I would like to see the figures for Q400 landing from the performance manual before making judgement.
I suspect there is a possibility that is was unacceptable to the DCA because he was not provided with a risk assessment for it.
However, the possibility exists to keep the existing length and have 135m RESAs. It should have been investigated and one has to ask why it wasn’t.
I am not sure there is any mileage in your housing estate/arterial road argument – have you seen how close the motorway is to the end of runway 20 in Southampton? (The RESA there is 73m plus a short soft bed)
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