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An airport built on a remote South Atlantic island by the coalition government – at the cost £285m of public money – cannot be used because planes landing there are blown off course, Whitehall’s spending watchdog has found.The development on St Helena was approved in 2010 by the then development secretary Andrew Mitchell and was one of the biggest single government investments ever made in a UK overseas territory.The cliff-top landing strip was due to be opened last month as part of a plan to end the island’s dependency on UK government subsidies.A report by the National Audit Office has found that safety concerns relating to windshear and turbulence have led to the mothballing of the airport. Windshear is a sudden powerful change in wind direction that can destabilise large aircraft and has been responsible for crashes around the world.The NAO said the Department for International Development (DfID) had subsidised St Helena with £28m in 2015-16 and was expected to hand it a total of £667m by 2043, when subsidies are due to end.
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Topic: Planes unable to land at £285m cliff-top airport on island of St Helena (Read 226 times)
