World’s most
Johannesburg via Windhoek to St Helena, Comair, pulled out because its Boeing 737s were particularly affected. The world – and particularly the British media – immediately dubbed St Helena airport, “the world’s most useless”.
Airlink, the other private South African airline, stepped in, offering to use its smaller Brazilian made jets, the Embraer E-190. It would still take another 17 months, though, before the first commercial flight landed.
Last Saturday, with two captains on the flight deck – chief pilot Jaco Henning and head of flight training Tammy King – SA 8131 took off as scheduled from OR Tambo International at 9am, refuelling at Windhoek before crossing the Atlantic.
Descending through a thick bank of bright white cloud that seemed to stretch all the way to the horizon on each side of the aircraft, SA 8131 finally broke through into the gloom on the island.
Henning had warned passengers there would be a go-around if the wind shear was too bad, expecting normal wind of 25km/h, but warning that winds could gust up to 50km/h. The aircraft, he said, was equipped with wind shear detection and, if necessary, would do a “normal left hand circuit” out over the sea and try again.
“Hier is ons teen die berg,” (here we are right up against the mountain) quipped one passenger, as the clouds cleared to reveal the runway built atop the volcanic outcrops.
There was a bit of turbulence, but Henning lined up and set the aircraft down very smartly.
“That was the most beautiful landing, wasn’t it?” exclaimed senior cabin attendant Masilo Mofokeng over the public address system to spontaneous applause.
The excitement was as palpable in the airport. Saints – as the 4 800 islanders are known – have not just been waiting for more than a year for the airport to be opened, they’ve also endured the breakdown of the bitter-einders to St Helena during the Anglo Boer War.
And that’s just part of the island’s history – all of which has only been accessible to people getting off the RMS or sailing halfway across the Atlantic on their own.
It’s a gem literally waiting to be discovered but, as publican and distiller Paul Hickling notes, the preferred market will be high yield, low volume.
The fear is that too many tourists could turn St Helena into the tourist hellholes that infest the overtraded West Indies and parts of the Mediterranean, particularly on the cruise liner routes, where individual ships disgorge thousands of passengers at a time.
It’s not an idle fear: St Helena tourism is targeting the 400 000 Brits who travel to South Africa every year and another 150 000 French tourists as their primary market.
As it is, the island cannot handle more than the expected 2 500 to 3 000 extra visitors per year, because there isn’t sufficient infrastructure to house them at the moment.
The island’s head of economic development, Dr Niall O’Keeffe admits there’s a huge amount of work to be done. There are challenges with communications for a start, St Helena only rolled out cellphones two years ago and the internet is slow by South African standards – and prohibitively expensive.
He hopes the new air service will help the island go above the 10 000 visitor mark for the year, for the first time next year.
He’s excited, though, about the trickle-down effect for the rest of the island, for suppliers who will move for the first time from a monthly to a weekly cycle.
The other major boost will come from investors moving onto St Helena to develop businesses and create jobs in the process.
The omens, though, are good; there’s been tremendous demand and incredible interest over the internet. All the accommodation on the island has been booked out for this month and next.
As businessman Craig Yon quips: “I used to check my email twice a week, now I check it twice a day.”
Many islanders hope the weekly air service, Airlink, which has promised to investigate the feasibility of a mid-week flight in due course, will also encourage members of the Saints diaspora to return home and visit relatives, if not actually settle.
There are probably more Saints living in Cape Town, the UK, Florida and the Falklands than there are on the island. If they could afford the money for a berth on the RMS to return home, they certainly couldn’t afford the time.
The flight will allow them now to get home in possibly under 24 hours than an entire week to fly to Cape Town and then board the ship.
The other attraction for the islanders is to create a future for the younger generations.
At the moment, there is very little for school leavers to do, as far as jobs are concerned. Many fly the coop, most to the Falklands – almost 6 000km south – to work, to save money to come home, build a house, buy a car and settle down with money in the bank. Many of them don’t return, though.
There’s a lot riding on the “world’s most useless airport”. The British government, for one, needs to break the island’s dependency on London by developing an economy.
For Phillips, however, there’s nothing useless about the airport at all. In the 18 months following completion, there have been charter flights and three medical evacuations to Cape Town.
“You know when you’re a St Helenan, it looks very different than it does to the rest of the world.
“When the RMS broke down, we chartered a flight and brought people home who would otherwise have been stranded. We med-evacced a newborn baby to Cape Town who wouldn’t have survived otherwise. That’s priceless.”