History was made when a King Air 200 touched down earlier this week on St. Helena, a volcanic origin tropical island located in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The flight started at Lanseria Airport in Johannesburg, South Africa and then traveled to Namibia, then Angola and then St. Helena with the final leg of the journey taking four hours.
Stepping out of the aircraft, Captain Grant Brighton told publication Merco Press: “It feels fantastic and we’re privileged to have flown the first plane to land on St Helena…The trip over was good. It was interesting landing here, a bit windy on the threshold but a terrific runway, surface, Airport and facility.”
St Helena, an island with a little over 4,000 inhabitants, has been only accessible by boat since it was discovered by the Portuguese in 1502. It is most famous for being the island where the British exiled a captured Napoleon. He would die on the island on May 5th, 1821.
The King Air 200 is flying calibration tests and other trials on the island over the next several weeks in order to ready the St. Helena airport; which will be inaugurated sometime early next year. The airport was built in a 300-foot deep valley which was filled in with nearly 8 million cubic meters of landfill to provide a total 1,950-meter long runway, suitable for Boeing 737-700W or similar aircraft. Total cost of the project was about $340 million USD.
“When we launched this work almost four years ago, such were the many obstacles to overcome that there were those who doubted that it would succeed and yet, behold, a plane has landed at St Helena Airport”, said Mark Capes, governor of St Helena.