Respected and long-serving former Valley Air Service pilot, Mr. Maurice Connor, has suggested the removal of utility poles and cables in the George Hill corridor at the approach to the Clayton Lloyd International Airport.
Mr. Connor made the appeal at a thank you and presentation ceremony held in his honour on Saturday, April 7, on the airport’s lawn. “In the aviation field, I am making one request of Mr. Curtis Richardson, the Minister of Infrastructure,” Mr. Connor said. “It is that before your term is up, I want to see all those poles in the George Hill area underground. They are very, very dangerous to aircraft coming in.
“I keep telling members of AASPA (the Anguilla Air and Sea Ports Authority) that I was coming from Puerto Rico one night at nine o’clock [going to St. Maarten]. I was in a Piper Navajo – I alone. The weather was good, with no clouds, nothing. On the approach, the aeroplane started going down. If I had been going to the airport in Anguilla that night I would have been in the poles. Promise me that you and Mr. Banks will have the poles removed.”
Mr. Richardson replied: “Just as a brief response, Mr. Connor, we are going to do our best, but I can tell you that God has a way of going ahead of us sometimes. Coming out of Hurricane Irma, one of the telecommunications companies here in Anguilla approached Government to join in [putting cables underground] and we believe we now have an agreement in the corridor with ANGLEC and one of the telecommunications providers.
“If we can hold true to that agreement, it is to put the electricity in George Hill underground. I know for sure that sometime next month they will be putting in the ducts, but we have to push to make sure that the electricity itself goes into those ducts and underground.
“It is a big undertaking but we know the importance of it to aviation, and we intend to accomplish that for the people of Anguilla.”
