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http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-40442318
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... nd-flightsAscension Islanders left stranded after RAF halts flights
Ascension Island, home to around 800 people, is even more cut off than it used to be after weekly flights linking the island to the UK were stopped -
due to a dodgy runway and the wrong kind of RAF aircraft.
The British overseas territory is the tip of an old volcano in the Atlantic Ocean, mid-way between Africa and Brazil.
It's so remote, that when the Portuguese discovered it on Ascension Day in 1501, they didn't even bother colonising it.
"Last year we had five or six thousand visitor nights," he says.
But with the end of the weekly flights all that has changed and businesses are quickly collapsing.
The runway, designed as an emergency landing strip for the Space Shuttle, is maintained by the US military.
It used to be one of the longest in the world but now badly needs maintenance,
and while there's a plan to have the tarmac repaired by 2020,
the Airbus A330 Voyager aircraft the RAF uses to land on the island is no longer suitable.
"Well basically it was the hub, so all the flights came here before they went on to the Falklands - the planes, the ships came here," said Jacqui Ellick whose husband's job brought them to the island 22 years ago.
"There are other planes that can land here, just not the A330.
At the moment the American planes still land here and the MoD have a C17 once a month for their own people,
but for the rest of us there is no way off except for the ship."
RAF engineers have visited Ascension to examine what are described as “significant problems” with the runway there.
“We do not expect South Atlantic Airbridge flights (operating with the Voyager aircraft) to recommence before 2019/20,” it said.
AITA added that flights to the Falklands would be rerouted because the Airbus A330 Voyager used on the route was too heavy for the damaged runway.
“The decision to reroute means the South Atlantic Airbridge will no longer call at Ascension Island en route to the Falkland Islands for the foreseeable future.”