New airfield

Press, 29 June 1983, Page 6

New airfield

NZPA-Reuter London Britain announced yesterday that it would build a new strategic airfield on the Falkland Islands to enable faster troop reinforcement in the disputed colony. The airfield, big enough to take wide-bodied civilian and military aircraft, will be built at Mount Pleasant between the capital Port Stanley and the settlement of Darwin, said the Defence Secretary, Mr Michael Heseltine. Construction of the £215 million ($507 million) project by a force of 1400 British workers would start later this year and the new

main runway should be operational from April, 1985, he told Parliament. The entire complex, including a road from the new airfield to Port Stanley, would be complete around February 1986. The single runway on the present airfield at Port Stanley is too small and too weak to take big aircraft. “At the moment, it takes a month for troops to get to the Falklands and back. That will be cut to three days,” Mr Heseltine told a news conference later. “The options open to us must be much wider, including an option of a smaller garrison.”