Ronaldsway Airport requires a significant capital investment running into tens of millions of pounds, with ageing air traffic control equipment and a severe staffing shortage creating resilience issues.
Jeff Robinson, Deputy Chief Officer at the Department of Infrastructure, said training an air traffic controller takes “three, four, five years”.
“The covid situation meant a break in that chain. So like many others, we’re trying to recover from that,” he said.
Some equipment, he added, was “getting very long in the tooth, and is becoming an operational challenge”.
Investment
Minister Tim Crookall MHK confirmed the scale of the required investment. “We’re not talking small amounts of money here with some of the stuff that needs doing,” he said.
He added that discussions with Treasury would be necessary. “You’re talking tens of millions of pounds over the whole infrastructure down there.”
Mr Robinson said the immediate priority was operational resilience, not passenger experience. “There are some really big fundamental issues there that have to be addressed if we are going to have operational resilience.”
He warned that investment decisions involved difficult trade-offs. “It’s not a black and white decision, it’s a gradient,” he said, adding that the investment plan would set out “how much are we willing to pay for what level of resilience”.