On Wednesday 17th of July, there will be no flights to or from St Mary’s Airport as many of the staff, including safety and fire staff, employed by the Council, are to take strike action. The aim of the national strike is to get a 6% pay rise for Council workers.

St Mary’s airport is run by the Isles of Scilly Council and, as many baggage handlers double up as airport firemen, there was no option but to close down the airport for the day due to safety worries.

Jack Dromey, national organiser of the TGWU, said to BBC News that council workers had ‘had enough’, adding: “They care but are not cared for by their employers.”

He added that he was “disappointment” that the Prime Minister had not offered a word of support to low paid public sector workers.

All helicopter flights will be diverted to Tresco, where the staff are paid by landowner Robert Dorien Smith. It is thought that many flights originally scheduled to land on St. Marys will land on Tresco and visitors will be transported to their destination by boat.

As the airport runway is he only space on the Islands capable of allowing passenger carrying fixed wing aircraft to land, Skybus will be unable to land in the Islands, so it will not be flying. It has not yet been decided whether an extra sailing will be needed from the Scillonian III in order to cope with passengers on cancelled Skybus flights.

Relatively few other Island services will be disrupted by this industrial action to the same degree as the disruption which the airport will face. This is the first Council workers strike since the ‘Winter of Discontent’ in 1979.

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