The long-delayed Argyle International Airport will open on Feb. 14 — five years behind scheduled, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves announced on radio on Thursday.
“I called in just to announce formally that Argyle International Airport would be opened on February 14th, on Valentine’s Day, the day of love,” he said on his Unity Labour Party’s radio station, Star FM.
“All of us in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, it’s a day which we’ve been looking forward to. So I thought that I should mention it to you. I will call around a couple other stations and say to them — give them this good news,” Gonsalves said.
He noted that the Feb. 14 opening of the airport had been hinted at on social media.
“Yesterday, I had a meeting with all the relevant stakeholders to make sure that Feb. 14 was a go,” the prime minister said.
“And I am told, a journalist called me this morning telling me social media abuzz that it is Feb. 14,” he said, adding that the journalist wanted confirmation.
Gonsalves said he was going to make the announcement in the new year but decided to do some after the inquiry by the journalist.
There have been speculations that the first commercial flight into the airport would be a chartered flight and Gonsalves confirmed this when he made the announcement.
“Head of the Tourism Authority,] Glen Beache, he is the point man dealing with the charters coming in for that day and so on and so forth. But I am hoping that Vincentians overseas, businesspeople, etc. they can organise charters.
“We are in for business,” Gonsalves said, but did not announce the name of any of the airlines that will make scheduled flights to the airport.
It is understood that regional carrier LIAT and Amerijet, an American cargo airline, will service the new airport while the government works out any kinks and continues to woo other carriers.
The EC$729 million airport has missed construction deadline annually since 2011 and has been a major plank of the 2005, 2010 and 2015 general elections.
After the airport missed numerous completion deadlines, Gonsalves said last year that he had been advised not to make any further announcements about completion targets until he was certain that they would be met.
First, there were the tens of millions in soft loans because the Coalition of the Willing turned out to be not so willing after all.
Now, we are promised a soft opening at Argyle airport on Valentines Day, February 14, 2017, featuring the landing of a charter flight from Toronto.
Will the airport be fully accredited and fully operational by that date or is this just another ULP publicity stunt?
Question: How is the soft opening at Argyle like a soft tone on a man?
Answer: Both are dead on arrival.
Q: How is a soft opening on a woman like the soft opening at Argyle?
A: Neither is suitable for a narrow landing.
Q: How is a soft tone landing on a woman like the soft opening at Argyle?
A: Nobody will come.
You think your so clever making such crass comments but you are truly a sicko.
You still owe me apologies for assault and insult, that two apologies.
There are women and children that read from this site and you are a danger to them with your comments.
You are a very sick man and require urgent mental health treatment.
An International airport for LIAT and chartered flights? We deserve better than that after waiting so long and spending that much money an the airport. That means we still can’t direct flights to our country from North America unless we charter flights?
So what does this say about the credibility of the Stewart Engineering Ltd. report commissioned by the NDP:
It is our considered professional opinion that this Airport cannot become operational before December 2018 (https://www.iwnsvg.com/2016/10/12/argyle-airport-wont-open-until-2018-engineer/ ).
Maybe it say nothing about its credibility if most of the worked they list in their report still remains unfinished which would make the February 14 opening a poppy-show at best. Maybe it destroys the report’s credibility, if most of this work has been completed.
Who knows? Not me, for sure!
I have always been reluctant to write about the technical issues of building Argyle airport except to note all the broken completion dates for the simple reason that — unlike people like Peter Binose whose wealth of comments suggest that he considers himself not only an expert in airport construction but has privileged access to many insiders and outsiders who have leaked him lots of confidential information, none of which he can substantiate — I have no expertise or inside knowledge whatsoever in this area.
But I do note that the two Stewart Engineering one-page summaries cannot be accepted as definitive because they present no detailed documentation of the findings or how they were obtained.
At the end of the day, the proof is in the pudding. If LIAT, Amerijet, Mustique Airways, SVG Air, and the odd charter from North America and Great Britain begin to service Argyle airport, this means that the airport is not only operational but actually operating.
None of this means that the airport will necessarily make a positive contribution to our economic well being, an assertion I continue to strongly deny based on all the reading and writing I have done about airports and tourism in general and our own tourism prospects in particular.
What I do know is that the operation of the airport will make a strong positive contribution to the re-election chances of the ULP which, after all, was the sole motive for its construction.
From ET to Layou is about $60EC. This new ride from AIA will be close to $100EC. I am thinking about getting a boat ride from St. Lucia or Grenada that can cost me $300 or $350EC. If I don’t use LIAT I can probably get to Layou for close to $200 less.
Now I am convinced that C Ben is a sick dude. I try to form a mental picture of him and only see a lonely sick physically unattractive man who has a hard time getting the attention of women. Who else will write this stuff in a national publication and believe that the white Europeans who settled Palestine after world war 2 have a title deed from god. Guy you need serious help.
By the way whether you and I like or not the airport is here to stay so deal with it.
You must be living on another planet or are simply in denial.
This is the kind of humour you hear on late-night TV all the time as well as well as from stand-up comedians on TV and in clubs.
This is the kind of humour you hear every day on the streets of Kingstown and on the block throughout the country.
Why is that any time someone writes something you disagree with that you have to call them crazy. This is so illogical and juvenile, an age-old way of trying to cut off any rational debate.
Actually, I thought I was being very clever but, alas, all you really focused on was my parody of our soon to be white elephant airport that would never come near justifying its construction and maintenance costs in terms of its spin-off benefits.
Yes, “the airport is here to stay” and its negative effects will haunt us for decades to come. With this kind of Labour love, we need no one to hate us!
(How is Argyle airport like an old man’s tone? It could never stand up on its own.)
Again the Unity&Labour cleptatorship is trying to mislead us. For a couple of weeks they have been claiming that Sunwings Airlines of Canada is landing a charter at Argyle Feb. 14.
I wrote the Airline and they said it is NOT TRUE. They have no such plan. 4-5 years ago they said they had assurances from Delta Airlines who told me that was not true.
The bottom line is the FAA has not approved Argyle Airport and so no flight that cannot be accommodated at Arnos Vale will ever fly into Argyle. NO major International Airline carrying passengers from UK, Canada nor USA will land at Argyle.
That was NOT the reason for the Argyle Airport. Realize that the “Cross Country” road was never built.
Argyle is being built because it provides large sums of monies into which the cleptomaniacs can push their hands. How is it that an airport that was scheduled to cost about EC$475M now costs more than twice as much where the major construction costs are taking place in an era of worldwide deflation in construction materials? Companies like the Australian raw materials giant Beneton is at bankruptcy’s gate because the raw materials they sell like cement, asphalt, oil have been at their lowest point in many years. They are in relative deflation, but somehow Argyle has shown 120% inflation.
In the end we and our children and their children will have to pay for a scam airport that will never be approved by the FAA or any other responsible authority and will do NOTHING that Arnos Vale cannot currently do.
There is way too much money floating around at Argyle so the incentives to scam us (including our elections) is too great.