Alderney flights bids all fall short

Bids were invited from 11 October, when a public service obligation in relating to Alderney’s air services was developed in conjunction with relevant Guernsey committees and the Alderney States.

The invitation to tender was for two PSOs to cover year-round, several times daily scheduled passenger services on the Alderney-Guernsey and Alderney-Southampton routes.

The Guernsey PSO also required the provision of a medevac charter transfer service, as well as the transport of post and medicines.

Four bids were placed, but none of these was acceptable, said the committee.

‘After careful consideration of the bids and follow-up exchanges with bidders as appropriate, while all bids had their merits, none of the bidders has convincingly demonstrated that it is able to fully deliver sustainable PSO services to the required standard and in the required timeframe.’

With no preferred bidder being appointed, the tender process has been closed and the committee said it will now work on an ‘alternative specification that will seek to attract responses that can better meet the air connectivity needs of Alderney’.

It said it intends to share this new specification at the earliest opportunity, and before the end of the second quarter of this year, to enable to bring in the right PSO solution as soon as possible next year.

‘The committee is grateful for the responses received, wishes to thank bidders for the time and effort which they have put in to responding to this ITT, and hopes that they will engage with the next ITT when it is published.’

Economic Development president Charles Parkinson said that the result of the tender process was clearly disappointing but there was a lot that could be learnt.

‘It does prove that the market was not particularly keen to partake with the offer we were making,’ he said.

‘Including medevac had made the contract unattractive. So we learnt something and that will be valuable to us as we go forward.’

He said that medevacs will have to be dealt with separately, since most operators do not want to deal with them.

‘Alderney will be even more disappointed than we are in the outcome, but they were involved in the whole process.’

Aurigny was one of the bidders, but he said that like the rest what it offered was not suitable. ‘Perhaps they will re-shape their offer.’

Alderney Policy and Finance chairman James Dent said the announcement by Economic Development ‘was not the outcome we would necessarily have wished for’.

But he said that there was something positive to take away from this: ‘I believe there will be moves to find an alternative specification that might be more appropriate to mainland airlines.’

He declined to comment further at this stage.