The Premier bit the bullet.  He ordered his Airports Minister to place a request for proposals to add just shy of 800 feet to the west of the existing runway.  

It allows our visitors added safety in take-off but does not, in that form, address the landing threshold.

We know that the extension would be more effective at the eastern end but we appear to still be tied up addressing questions based on the business case.  

(And we have been directed to cease all activities, otherwise, including environmental impact updates.)

For example, if we extend the runway, what becomes the carrying capacity of the terminal?  Would we have a fuel depot to refuel aircrafts?  How do we reconcile our preferred runway length with the postulates of the business case?

These are questions that should be answered but are they enough, on their own, to deny or delay approval?  (“Justice delayed is justice denied.”)

Our experience is that the questions will keep coming and we will never be able to satisfy the interrogators if they do not wish to be satisfied.

So, we have our suspicions that at the heart of our impasse is trust.  They do not trust us and we must examine ourselves to know if it is also the case that we cannot be trusted.

Still, the extension to the west was always figured into the designs.  We are phasing it in at this stage.  And that may be the difference between the project remaining alive or falling off the public works agenda.

We value the relationship with the British.  It gives our visitors confidence that they have recourse to a former world ruling power with considerable influence in geopolitics if issues arise.

It also enables foreign direct investments because those investors know that they have rights of appeal, in law, to the Privy Council should it become necessary.

And definitely, with ‘Big Brother’ looking over our shoulders, that ‘C’ word is well corralled in public life.

A win-win all around?

But we sometimes struggle to understand the end game.  Dame Margaret Hodge thinks that we are more suited to tourism than Financial Services given the natural beauty of these islands and such of the tourism infrastructure that exists.

She believes we are a tax haven and that dirty money flows here.  She would never dream of applying the same lens to her backyard for what she would likely uncover, may be most unsettling, and threaten her equilibrium.

And yet, she who touched down on the runway of the T.B Lettsome International Airport, possibly in a state of fright, knows that it is ripe for an extension.

A true International Airport with an adequately sized runway is the economic driver for our tourism industry.  However, it does not seem to attract the level of support in Whitehall that it should.

Couple that with some of the sections of the Law Enforcement Review Report, Volume 2, which threatens our very tourism industry, and all bets are off.

What have we done that our wholesale demise has become attractive to others?  We have been a hardworking people for generations despite the current messaging to the contrary that puts us at odds with work.

King Duncan (Macbeth) once said of the Thane of Cawdor: “There is no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.”  And we confess that in that theatre, our skills take flight.

We can never compare ourselves to the UK with its population of 59M and we should not.  They have closer to 12 significant airports with Heathrow, the busiest airport in Europe, handling about 7M passengers per month. 

Heathrow has been approved for the construction of a third runway expansion at a cost of approximately £50B.

The BVI population is under 40K depending on who is counting and the proposed extension to the runway will run us over $400M with close to half of that sum as contingency.

Kurt A.G  Menal, in his 27th May farewell to the BVIAA proudly noted an 80% increase in passenger arrivals from 176,000 passengers in 2022 to 317,676 passengers in 2025.

That mainly accounts for the presence of American in the marketplace with the direct Miami/Beef Island flight.  

We suspect our numbers are stronger but we still have dependence on the Cyril E. King Airport on St. Thomas.  A stroke of the pen in the halls of the UK Foreign Office changes that. (We are optimistic)

And neither should we compare ourselves to St. Helena for it is one of the most remote places on earth and access for the 5,500 people who live there was problematic until the British decided to invest  £285M in foreign aid to build them an airport.

It didn’t seem to matter that wind shear was an issue which made operating the airport dangerous at times.  And it should not matter that only 2000 tourists per year darken the halls of the airport terminal.

What mattered is the partnership; The commitment Britain held to the people of that Overseas Territory.  And it makes us wonder what commitments, if any, they hold for us?

We are jealous.

But we are not asking Britain to pay for our extension.  We will do that ourselves.  They will claim a contingent liability which means that if we default, they will begin the payback by liquidating BVI assets.

All we are asking, having followed the rules, is for their approval of the extension.  We have been trying to extend the runway for more than a decade.  

And what we are saying now is that with the key issues addressed, we can further address those that surface as the project progresses.

Unless we are in a causality loop.

‘Mother May I’ is a game we played as children.  But that and other games like ‘Ring around the Rosie’ were never children’s games at all.  They were vehicles of education and indoctrination.

We just want to know that ‘Mother’ may have an interest in our survival.  We will even take a fraction of the interest exhibited in the people of St. Helena if it were available.

After all, we are both OTs of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland even if egalitarianism has fled the space.

Fridays are important for gathering our thoughts on issues that affect our wellbeing.

Happy Friday!