closure

CONCERNS have been raised over the temporary closure of a British Isle airport in a £24million scheme to rebuild its runway.

The charming British Isle of Guernsey has long been loved for trips, with flights between 40 minutes to an hour, but the future of its airport hangs in uncertainty.

Plans were in place to improve Alderney’s only airport – approved back in 2022 – but delays and climbing costs have put the development on pause.

The plans, due to start in 2024, were for the airport to have a £24million renovation to improve services and have more flights to and from the island; there are currently around seven flights to Alderney a day.

The makeover would extend the runway so it could welcome larger planes as well as modernise the 1960s terminal building.

Guernsey officials warned the airport may need to close for an “extended period” to complete the scheme in the shortest time – work could start in 2027.

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Chris Blythe, Alderney resident and pilot and flying instructor, said he was concerned about the possibility of the airport closure leaving islanders “cut off”.

Sharing his worry, Blythe spoke on BBC News and said: “I think it’s going to be pretty brutal for the people on the island to be cut off and there’s been nothing said yet about how we would get to Guernsey or the mainland.”

He added: “From the point of view of the people who will be working on the project, there’s going to be a whole load of workers… who are going to be trapped on the island with us.”

Blythe insists passengers deserved to have a runway which was up to specification and met minimum legal requirements.

The proposed scheme involved the reconstruction of the asphalt runway, to meet minimum aerodrome design standards. Blythe believes this “was always going to be the only option”.

Blythe said: “The main runway in Alderney is not very good, in light aircraft it doesn’t really matter that much but for commercial aircraft it needs to be better than that.”

He added: “I think the previous proposal to extend it and put ATRs in was ludicrous and I think anybody who knew much about aviation probably came to that conclusion.”

Dec. 27 (UPI) — The FBI Hoover headquarters in Washington soon will be vacant as the federal law enforcement agency prepares to make a permanent exit in favor of a more modern structure.

FBI Director Kash Patel plans to make a permanent move into the former headquarters of the recently closed U.S. Agency for International Development sometime soon, according to Bloomberg.

“After more than 20 years of failed attempts, we finalized a plan to permanently close the FBI’s Hoover headquarters and move the workforce into a safe, modern facility,” Patel said in a social media post on Friday.

Moving into the former USAID headquarters will save taxpayers almost $5 billion, which was allocated to build a new FBI headquarters that would not have opened until 2035, Patel said.

“We scrapped that plan,” he explained. “Instead, we selected the already-existing Reagan Building, saving billions and allowing the transition to begin immediately with required safety and infrastructure upgrades underway.”

When the improvements are done, Patel said the FBI staff will move into the Reagan Building, which is located at 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W., between the White House and the Capitol. He did not say when the move might occur.

The Hoover Building will be shut down after the FBI vacates it, the FBI director added.

While Patel said the move will save taxpayers billions of dollars, Maryland lawmakers are not happy about the change in plans.

Congress had approved the allocation to build a new FBI headquarters in Maryland during the Biden administration, but the change in plans has canceled that.

“Not only was this decision final, [but] the Congress appropriated funds specifically for the purpose of the new, consolidated campus to be built in Maryland,” the state’s Democratic Party Congressional delegation said in a joint statement in July.

“Now the Administration is attempting to redirect those funds — both undermining Congressional intent and dealing a blow to the men and women of the FBI — since we know that a headquarters located within the District [of Columbia] would not satisfy their security needs,” the delegation said.

Maryland officials in November filed a federal lawsuit accusing the Trump administration of improperly diverting $555 million when it announced the change of plans for the FBI headquarters.

“These actions flouted Congress’s explicit direction to choose a site from the three specified sites, as well as other specific statutory directives concerning the selection of the site and the use of the funds,” state attorneys say in the federal lawsuit.

The J. Edgar Hoover Building opened in 1974 and has been the FBI’s headquarters for the past 50 years.

Prior to that, the FBI was headquartered in the Justice Department building.