The Minister for Infrastructure says that scheduled airport closures are inflexible due to regulations.

It comes as Chris Thomas was being questioned on the runway closures caused by air traffic control officer shortages during the House of Keys this week.

Mr Thomas said: ‘The changes were implemented to provide a viable roster with a number of currently employed, fully endorsed air traffic control officers.

‘It will also accommodate training requirements whilst ensuring mandated fatigue breaks for the duty controllers.

‘There is limited flexibility around these mandated breaks as they are a regulatory requirement, non-compliance puts the individual controllers licence at risk and could incur regulatory sanctions against the airport.’

‘I appreciate concern regarding mandated rest breaks and their impact on schedule movements at our airport. However, it is important to note that the airport has made every effort to factor in these rest breaks with the least possible disruption to facilitate smooth operations.

‘This has been communicated to airlines to ensure a stable pattern of closures for them to schedule around.

He added that the resources for ground handling are only sufficient to accommodate one flight landing at a time.

Douglas North MHK, David Ashford, said that under runway occupancy criteria, the runway had to be available for 15 minutes in case an aircraft had to return in the event of an incident, meaning that the runway has to close 15 minutes before the scheduled times.

However, there are ten flights a week that are scheduled either in the time of the runway closures, or up to 15 minutes before, and so cannot meet their timetable.

Mr Thomas said that the schedule is designed both to maximise the use of the available ATCOs reasonably and to minimise or even optimise the disruption to airline schedules.

A number of MHKs questioned the minister on the reputational damage, as well as damage to business relations that the disruption was causing.

Garff MHK Daphne Caine said: ‘The reputational damage and lack of confidence in the airport is affecting everybody in the island, as well as prospective businesses coming to the Isle of Man and is probably the biggest failure of the DoI.

‘Does this failure date back a couple of years? Where was the future planning to put the necessary air traffic control officers in post and training?’

Mr Thomas said: ‘The current intermittent closures will last until August 13.

‘ There are many airports around the British Isles and beyond that have closures during the day.’

He added: ‘The airport has regularly asked EasyJet to schedule its last flights earlier on in the day, but that doesn’t work for EasyJet because they have to fly to two places in Europe and to Belfast most days before they come to the Isle of Man. That’s their choice not our choice.’

‘There were people in the airport who were very worried about resilience in the tower a few years ago, but we are where we are with the whole government’s resources.

‘Tynwald’s discussions as it seems after today’s discussions, is devoted to properly resourcing the services in the air tower.

‘We have spent money to support airlines, we have made some investments in the airport and there’s a whole raft now of small projects in the short term, slightly larger projects in the medium term, to make sure that we have more resilience in the tower.’

‘There is regular dialogue between airlines and the airport management, does that mean that the director of the airport spoke to every member of cabin crew and every member of flight deck with every airline flying in and out of the Isle of Man? No.

‘They didn’t ask their opinion on this but the airlines are fully involved.’

Mr Thomas said that it will be a difficult summer in terms of air travel and advised the public to plan accordingly.