Isles of Scilly helicopter service

In his letter of March 5, Adrian Wirth on behalf of BIHL corrected the impression I must have given on January 30, that the Penzance Helicopter Operators receive a government subsidy.

On more than one occasion I used the BIHL state of the art service to St Mary's and the other Isle and I am also familiar with the profitability of the operation as I was involved in talks with senior members of management to encourage them to set up shop in Malta. That was when British International Helicopters were known as "Brinter".

In my letter to The Times I had used the Penzance operation as an example of a same genre situation if our government was disposed to subsidise a helicopter service and I did not want to imply that BIHL receive any form of subsidy. My precise line was "The answer is a subsidised helicopter operation similar to Penzance and the Isles of Scilly".

Naturally I do not blame Mr Wirth for his corrective action as my version can construe a different meaning, perhaps I should have given it a different grammatical structure. While assuring Adrian Wirth and BIHL that this was not intentional I apologise if an inconvenience was caused.