MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Falkland Islanders travelling on air-bridge April 16 and 18 will be refunded

Passengers from the air bridge to Brize Norton boarding at MPA

Falkland Islanders that travelled on the South Atlantic air-bridge (Brize Norton-MPA and MPA-Brize Norton) on 16 and 18 April will be refunded since a non civilian-registered aircraft was involved, but will have to pay a £150 booking fee in order to support the government's policy of subsidizing air-bridge fares.

 According to a release from Gilbert House, during the week commencing 14th April 2014, the civilian-registered Air Tanker Voyager which ordinarily serves as the airframe for the South Atlantic air-bridge underwent scheduled maintenance. This maintenance is standard procedure for all Air Tanker airframes.

Passengers travelling on the air-bridge services southbound on the 16th April and northbound on the 18th April will have noticed that a military Voyager served as the air-frame in place of the civilian Voyager. As an aircraft on the military register (and not civilian), the replacement Voyager airframe is not permitted to carry fare-paying passengers and as a result the Falkland Islands Government (FIG) was not charged for any civilian passengers travelling on the air-bridge on the affected dates.

In order to off-set the deficit incurred by FIG through the subsidy of air-bridge fares, Members of Legislative Assembly, alongside the Ministry of Defence, agreed a £150 booking fee should apply to all civilian passengers travelling on the affected air-bridge dates.

As all air-bridge fares are paid by passengers in advance, via the booking services at the Falkland Islands Company or the Falkland Islands Government Office in London (FIGO), passengers who travelled on the affected air-bridge dates will be eligible for a refund of the difference between the booking fee and their fare, regardless of whether they travelled as a child, a student or an adult.

In effect, the partial fare refund will be applicable as follows:

Adults (‘Duty’ one-way fare £770) - £620 refund one way
Children (one-way fare £424) - £274 refund one way
Students (one-way fare £424) - £274 refund one way

Embarkation Tax of £22 will still be charged for Northbound departures on the 18th April, as per FIG Immigration policy.

All refunds will be issued by the agent with whom passengers booked their flights.

Chair of the Legislative Assembly, MLA Michael Poole, spoke of the issue: ‘We considered a variety of options for how to deal with this situation, and ultimately decided that this was the best of a number of imperfect ways available to deal with the issue. For any future maintenance periods a more appropriate solution is planned.’