To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what the status is of the monthly flight logs of flights which have passed through Diego Garcia from January 2002 to January 2009.
Answered on
15 July 2014
During routine work to add existing records to the store in Diego Garcia, BIOT immigration officials noted water damage to a small number of records, caused by a leaking roof. This is believed to have resulted from extremely heavy weather in June 2014. Although the extent of the damage was not clear on initial inspection at the time, as I said in my answer of 8 July to PQ203500, records from 2002 appeared to be incomplete due to water damage.
However, since my answer of 8 July, BIOT immigration officials have conducted a fuller inspection, and previously wet paper records have been dried out. They report that no flight records have been lost as a result of the water damage. A small number of immigration arrival cards from 2004 have been damaged, but that information about those flights is still available in the daily occurrence logs and monthly statistics. These records provide dates of aircraft movements in the Territory, and passenger and crew numbers.
Following the incident, all hard copy records from the affected location are being transferred from the airport to a new location, and will be digitalised over the coming months.