St Helena's £285 Million Airport Has a Destination Problem: Britain Is Still Paying the Bill
![Editorial illustration for The World's Most Useful Airport [Documentary]](https://angrypages.com/primary-media/channels/wendover-productions/elle-articles/5-QejUTDCWw/9da2edf562aba1cf2b8113aab4ad42d908e3181e2ab6c07fa1d3f9bbdb224ac7/c24b5b979d73bdd0197cede581a88d0ff439c3d1000852586872abc7313f4796.png)
The strongest criticism of Wendover Productions' 2019 documentary is not that St Helena Airport was useless. It is that the documentary presented a long-term economic rescue plan whose financial assumptions were already questionable—and whose results have since fallen substantially short of the original ambitions.
Britain did not simply build a runway. It committed taxpayers to an economic development strategy built around tourism growth, commercial aviation and eventual financial independence. The UK's National Audit Office subsequently found that the airport had not delivered the expected increase in tourism income or put the island on course for self-sufficiency by the originally anticipated date.
NAO press release+1
The warning signs existed before the airport opened
The documentary treats the airport's economic ambitions as a difficult but reasonable experiment. Yet Parliament had already identified serious weaknesses in the experiment's underlying financial model in December 2016.
The Public Accounts Committee found that:
- The original tourism forecast had been reduced from 59,000 to 29,208 annual visitors by 2042 without new primary research.
- The comparison islands included the Solomon Islands, Easter Island, the Galápagos and Cape Verde. All already had air access before their airports were upgraded, and all were larger than St Helena.
- The projected benefit-cost ratio was only 1.06, even after including tourist spending.
- That marginally positive calculation depended on tourists spending near the top of the estimated range of £82–£195 per day.
This was not a criticism invented after the project struggled. The risks were documented before commercial flights began.
Committee of Public Accounts+2
The wind-shear problem was more than a tabloid invention
The documentary correctly challenges inaccurate headlines claiming the airport was closed or impossible to use. But it leaves out an important distinction: the underlying engineering criticism had already been substantiated by Parliament.
In December 2016, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee called it "staggering" that the Department for International Development had commissioned and completed the airport without first establishing the effect of prevailing winds on safe commercial landings. Wind shear was a known aviation issue. The committee also criticised the department for relying on external contractors without commissioning an independent technical adviser to challenge their work.
Committee of Public Accounts+1
The problem was therefore not simply that an unusual island airport encountered unexpected weather. It was that a major engineering project reached completion before a critical operational risk had been adequately assessed.
The National Audit Office subsequently recorded that the government reached a compensation settlement with Atkins in January 2019 following a dispute concerning its role in the airport's design. The documentary discusses the failed Comair landing but omits this wider accountability history.
National Audit Office (NAO)
That omission matters. It makes the airport's early difficulties look more like unavoidable experimentation than a failure of project planning and technical oversight.
The economic forecast was weaker than the documentary suggests
The original business case projected growth from 959 annual tourists in 2015 to 29,208 by 2042. But the Department had originally forecast as many as 59,000 tourists before cutting that estimate almost in half.
The parliamentary committee found that the revised projection had not been confirmed through new primary research. Its comparison islands—the Solomon Islands, Easter Island, the Galápagos and Cape Verde—were all larger than St Helena and already had air access before their airports were upgraded.
Committee of Public Accounts
The financial calculation was particularly fragile. The business case had a benefit-cost ratio of just 1.06 when tourist expenditure was included, meaning projected benefits exceeded costs by only 6%.
Its projected tourist spending was £172 per person per day, while the department's own research put the possible range at £82–£195. The positive economic case depended on spending near the top of that range. At the lower end, estimated costs exceeded benefits.
Committee of Public Accounts
That is not a robust economic foundation for a £285.5 million public infrastructure commitment. It is a forecast whose success depends on several optimistic assumptions working together.
To be fair, the documentary's 2019 snapshot was not fabricated. The National Audit Office subsequently confirmed that 2,481 tourists arrived that year, in line with the original business-case projection. The problem was treating that early result as reassurance about a growth trajectory extending more than two decades into the future.
National Audit Office (NAO)
The commercial service still depends on British taxpayers
Wendover does disclose that the UK government agreed to underwrite Airlink's losses. It even quotes an official explaining that the arrangement was not a per-passenger subsidy.
But the documentary then highlights Airlink's small first-year profit without examining the longer-term financial exposure behind the service.
The subsequent figures are revealing:
- Almost £3 million annually from the FCDO to cover the airport's operating shortfall.
- £807,000 paid to Airlink between June 2023 and May 2024 because of delays, cancellations and insufficient passenger numbers.
- £29.4 million in cumulative UK government support for airport operations by November 2024.
Airlink's contract was renegotiated in November 2024 and extended until at least March 2028. The airline's income from the service still did not cover its costs.
National Audit Office (NAO)+1
The distinction between a commercial flight and a commercially self-sustaining flight is important. St Helena has the former. It has not demonstrated the latter.
The 2025/26 St Helena budget reinforces the point. Its £35.79 million UK financial aid package includes £2.995 million specifically allocated to airport operations.
St Helena
Meanwhile, total annual UK financial aid rose from £26.7 million in 2015–16 to £33 million in 2023–24, measured in real terms. The island's population declined by approximately 10% over the same broad period.
There is an important qualification: the National Audit Office attributes part of the increase in aid to an ageing population and rising healthcare costs, not the airport. Health and social care expenditure increased from £5.2 million in 2012–13 to £16.4 million in 2022–23. The airport cannot fairly be blamed for the entire increase in government assistance.
National Audit Office (NAO)+1
But it is equally impossible to claim that the airport has delivered the promised financial independence.
The island cannot yet accommodate the tourism being promised
The airport can bring visitors to St Helena. That does not mean St Helena can accommodate them profitably.
The National Audit Office found that average occupancy on Johannesburg flights was just 53% between June 2023 and May 2024. More than half of the people classified as tourists were non-resident Saints visiting the island, who were estimated to spend around 60% as much as foreign tourists.
National Audit Office (NAO)
The distinction matters because passenger numbers alone do not measure the value of tourism revenue.
The island also has a serious accommodation problem. By March 2024, serviced rooms had fallen from 83 in 2019 to 71. There were only three hotels in Jamestown and none elsewhere on the island. The Mantis Hotel, which provides just under half the island's serviced rooms, was operating at a loss and receiving government support.
National Audit Office (NAO)
The government also identified shortages of hospitality workers, rental cars and local tour operators as constraints on tourism development.
This creates an uncomfortable economic circle: businesses are reluctant to invest because visitor numbers are uncertain, while visitor numbers cannot grow substantially without better accommodation, transport and tourism services.
A runway cannot resolve that problem by itself.
The pandemic deserves substantial consideration. Commercial flights and ordinary tourism stopped for two years between March 2020 and March 2022. The government subsequently supported a tourism recovery programme with £1 million of UK funding.
National Audit Office (NAO)+1
By 2024/25, tourism arrivals had recovered to approximately 92% of their 2018/19 level. Combined tourist arrivals and St Helenian holiday visits had reached 94% of their pre-pandemic level, with estimated visitor spending broadly back to its previous level.
St Helena
That is genuine recovery. It is not the extraordinary growth required by the original business case.
The associated infrastructure remains a separate financial problem
There is another detail missing from the documentary's economic narrative: the airport project included much more than the runway and terminal.
The original £285.5 million contract covered associated infrastructure, including a replacement bulk fuel installation at Rupert's Valley. The National Audit Office reported that the overall project had cost £281.5 million against its £285.5 million budget, so it would be wrong to claim the entire project had exceeded its approved budget.
National Audit Office (NAO)
However, the fuel installation experienced a serious separate cost and delivery problem.
By May 2020, £78 million had been spent on it, against an original budget of £31 million. Construction had been interrupted after Basil Read entered administration in 2018, and the facility remained unfinished when the National Audit Office reported in February 2025.
National Audit Office (NAO)
The position remained unresolved in March 2026. The St Helena Government told its Legislative Council that approximately £2 million had been spent on maintenance and project costs since 2022, with another £8.5 million estimated to complete and commission the installation. A new specialist contractor had been recruited, with completion expected to take up to 20–24 months.
St Helena
By June 2026, work on the installation had entered a new phase, while a separate aviation fuel facility was largely complete and undergoing commissioning.
St Helena
This is not evidence that the runway itself was a construction-budget failure. It is evidence that the infrastructure surrounding the airport became a much longer and more complicated undertaking than the original timetable suggested.
The airport's strongest achievement is not an economic one
There is one part of the documentary's argument that deserves to survive every criticism: medical access.
By October 2024, the airport had enabled 87 medical evacuation flights to South Africa, benefiting approximately 100 people. Each dedicated evacuation flight cost the St Helena Government around £50,000, while overseas medical treatment cost approximately £2 million annually.
National Audit Office (NAO)
Eli's story is not an accounting trick. It illustrates a genuine humanitarian benefit that the old shipping arrangement could not reliably provide.
But this is precisely where the economic argument needs greater discipline. An airport can be worth maintaining because it saves lives, protects residents and provides essential access without ever becoming commercially self-sufficient.
Those are two different investment cases. The documentary gives the first a compelling human face, then uses the airport's potential economic benefits to build a much larger promise.
The humanitarian case does not prove the financial one.
Even the airport's basic operational resilience remains vulnerable
In February 2026, all three airport firefighting vehicles developed critical mechanical faults. Commercial operations were suspended between 6 and 15 February while the airport restored its required firefighting capability.
St Helena+1
An independent investigation published in September 2026 found that the failures involved internal water-pump gearbox components. Importantly, investigators found that airport staff had followed the manufacturer's maintenance instructions and that the developing failures could not have been predicted through the prescribed routine inspections.
The investigation also identified a significant maintenance-information problem: the pump manufacturer had revised its oil specification in 2021, but the updated manual was not supplied to the airport by its service partner until 2026. The investigation did not establish that this omission alone caused the failures.
St Helena
This is not evidence of negligence by the airport's staff. It illustrates the difficulty of maintaining a highly specialized aviation operation in a remote location, where technical support, replacement equipment and reliable external suppliers matter enormously.
The airport returned to normal operations in February. But a nine-day interruption to the island's principal commercial air connection demonstrates how much depends on a relatively small number of critical systems.
The original economic promise has lost its timetable
The most consequential development came in the National Audit Office's February 2025 assessment.
The FCDO acknowledged that its original tourist-growth projections were over-optimistic and that financial self-sufficiency was unlikely within the original 2043 timeframe. It had not published revised tourism forecasts beyond 2024.
The NAO also concluded that the airport had not delivered the tourism income or reduction in British financial assistance anticipated in the original business case. It called for the British and St Helena governments to establish fresh projections and a credible strategy for achieving them.
National Audit Office (NAO)+1
There is an important limitation: the NAO explicitly did not undertake a value-for-money assessment of the entire project. Its report should not be misrepresented as a finding that the airport was definitively a waste of money.
But the central economic promise remains unfulfilled.
Wendover's documentary concluded that St Helena could experience an economic renaissance if the airport's growth trajectory continued. That was a conditional prediction, not a guarantee. Yet the subsequent official record shows that the original trajectory could not be maintained and the government has not replaced it with a credible new timetable.
The airport is useful. It connects families, enables medical evacuations and gives a remote British community access to opportunities that were previously much harder to reach.
But a runway is not an economic development strategy. A weekly flight is not a tourism industry. And a government underwriting an airline's losses is not evidence of commercial independence.
My verdict: St Helena Airport is a genuine public-service lifeline, but its promised economic rescue remains unproven. The documentary gives readers a persuasive reason to want the airport to succeed, but not enough reason to believe that its original economic model was sound.
Britain may have made a defensible decision to build the airport. It has not yet demonstrated that the investment will deliver the financial independence used to justify it.
Until the governments publish realistic tourism targets, account for the continuing operating support and demonstrate how the island can accommodate substantially more visitors, the promised economic renaissance remains a hope financed by British taxpayers.
References
1. Wendover Productions — The World's Most Useful Airport (Original documentary). The work under review, including its economic forecasts, treatment of the wind-shear controversy and prediction of an economic renaissance.
2. House of Commons Public Accounts Committee — St Helena Airport (13 December 2016). Documents the weaknesses in the original tourism projections, the narrow benefit-cost margin and the questionable comparison islands. See also its conclusions and recommendations on engineering oversight.
3. National Audit Office — Realising the benefits of St Helena Airport: a progress update (12 February 2025). Provides the independent audit evidence on tourism, passenger occupancy, airline underwriting, airport operating costs, medical evacuations and unfinished infrastructure.
4. St Helena Government — 2025/26–2027/28 Budget Book (2025). Documents tourism constraints, visitor numbers and the continuing UK financial aid commitment.
5. St Helena Government — The State of the Nation (19 January 2026). Supplies the latest recovery figures available in this research, showing tourism and visitor spending approaching pre-pandemic levels rather than the original growth trajectory.
6. St Helena Legislative Council — Order Paper and Written Responses (19 March 2026). Provides the government's updated cost estimates and construction timetable for the unfinished bulk fuel installation.
7. St Helena Government Programme Management Office — PULSE Quarterly Newsletter (June 2026). Records the latest construction and commissioning progress on the fuel infrastructure projects.
8. GBB UK Limited / St Helena Government — Independent Investigation into the February 2026 Airport Closure (30 September 2026). Provides the mechanical investigation findings, including the fire-tender failures, maintenance arrangements and manufacturer-manual issue.