Atlantic Star: What are we doing?

Richard Brown and Andy Radford attended the St.Helena Tourism event at the Westminster Assembly Rooms this week and came away impressed with the progress being made and especially the enthusiasm shown by the Tourism team attending World Travel Market and other events promoting St.Helena. Naturally we were asked "what are your plans for the future and can you share them with the Saint community?" We are encouraged by the excellent progress being made by the SA Airlink service and the consequent development of tourism infrastructure on the island and associated investment by Saints and others. This investment is essential to build the sustainable tourism based economy that the island needs. We are hopeful that the operational data being built up by SA Airlink, particularly in the use of the into wind runway 20 will be made available to other potential operators. This will permit us to make a robust safety case for using Runway 20 for landing of flights from the UK and return to the charter flight concept that we had launched prior to the discovery of well documented windshear issues. Once the necessary volume of data is available we will approach St.Helena Government with a view to exploring the opportunity for a UK originating charter service for Christmas 2018. This service would be aimed at Saints giving the opportunity for a 3 week visit to the island or to the UK during the Christmas and New Year period. We have already had a preliminary discussion with a potential operator about delivery of this service. It is too early for us to release any more information at this stage but please be assured we remain committed to the concept of UK originating flights and will share more information regarding progress when we can. Best Regards Richard, Andy, Aiden Directors, Atlantic Star