'Worst is behind' Aurigny, says deputy

Deputy Peter Roffey said some of his colleagues in the States were "disproportionately agitated" by the airline's recent problems

Deputies from the States of Guernsey have had a broadly positive reaction to meetings with Aurigny to discuss the airline's recent problems.

The States-owned airline has held a series of meetings this week with politicians to help them understand the issues and the plan to improve the situation.

Deputy Peter Roffey, president of the States Trading Supervisory Board (STSB), felt "the worst is behind" the airline now it had all three of the ATR planes it owns back on the Island.

He said Aurigny was leasing two more ATRs soon which would mean it would have "a program that requires four planes" and "one spare plane or 20%, which I think is a relatively good degree of resilience".

An Aurigny ATR plane on the runway at Guernsey Airport

'Communication could be better'

Mr Roffey said the current situation was "suboptimal" but he had been "very impressed" with the airline's management.

He said that some deputies had become "disproportionately agitated" by the airline's recent problems and has seen it as "a way of scoring points".

Mr Roffey said that a minority of deputies who had criticised the airline's decision to sell their jet earlier this year were "completely ill informed".

He said the ATRs were more economic and sustainable and the decision to sell the jet was "completely the right thing to do".

Deputy John Gollop said the airline's management "might acknowledge that communication could be better" but the airline had had a "good couple of years" with their performance "generally above industry norms" and had been "a very good news story" until recent months.

Deputy Chris Le Tissier said he was "overall happy" with the airline's response and wanted to give the "benefit of the doubt to management", but warned that "if it carries on towards the end of the year something will have to be done".

Deputy Chris Le Tissier says he was surprised to discover Health and Social Care did not use States-owned Aurigny to take patients to Southampton

Mr Le Tissier raised some concerns relating to Blue Islands, the other main airline to fly in and out of Guernsey.

He said Aurigny was "unfairly getting the blame" when flights which are shared with Blue Islands get cancelled.

Mr Le Tissier planned to raise concerns about the use of Blue Islands aircraft on medical flights with the president of Health and Social Care (HSC), an issue he said was new to him.

He said: "Apparently, HSC only use Blue Island when they send patients to Southampton, which seems a bit of a strange situation when the States of Guernsey, the people of Guernsey own Aurigny. Why aren't we using them?"

Aurigny's CEO Nico Bezuidenhout has previously apologised to customers for the disruptions.

He said: "Our priority is to provide our customers with safe air connectivity to and from Guernsey on lifeline routes, and we assure you we are doing all we can to return to the service reliability our customers expect."