Eastern Airways’ deal gives Aurigny single-ticket UK links

Aurigny has been developing relationships with other carriers to add more accessible regional and worldwide connectivity.

‘Throughout the pandemic the lifeline service to Southampton has further strengthened our position at the airport and our Eastleigh-based staff have also secured ground handling work from other airlines,’ an Aurigny spokesman said.

One of the key players at Southampton is Eastern Airways, which provides flights from there to Dublin, Belfast, Teesside, Aberdeen, Leeds Bradford and Manchester.

‘Aurigny is delighted to announce an agreement with Eastern meaning that our customers will soon be able to book a flight from Guernsey to one of these destinations in a single transaction on the Aurigny website,’ the spokesman said.

The other benefit of booking in one transaction is that customers avoid the need to pay UK Air Passenger Duty twice, which is what happens when onward flights are booked separately.

Tony Burgess, managing director of Eastern Airways, was excited about the partnership which will allow the two airlines collectively to provide greater connectivity, focused initially on the Southampton Airport hub.

‘This will open up a wide array of connections throughout the UK and the Channel Islands to our customers including Manchester, Belfast, Leeds-Bradford, Teesside, Aberdeen, Dublin and new destinations planned for 2021,’ he said.

‘By forging this partnership and joining our networks, we will now look forward to welcoming many more customers on board and providing them with an extended choice of simplified route options and seamless connectivity whether they be travelling for business or pleasure. Flights are planned to be available for booking from later this month.

Aurigny’s commercial director Malcolm Coupar added: ‘This is great news for our customers as it is often a challenge in small market jurisdictions to offer the regional connectivity desired by all as demand does not justify direct flights.

‘By teaming up with Eastern we are able to provide our customers with more regional choice out of Southampton and other UK points in the future.

‘As we come out of this pandemic, I expect we will see more airlines concentrate their operations out of certain hubs and that agreements between airlines will be more commonplace for the benefit of the customer.

‘We are also working on agreements with other key airlines offering services from the UK to develop “Worldwide by Aurigny”, which will offer customers connecting flights to worldwide destinations booked via the Aurigny website.’

In order to launch this, Aurigny is working with the developers of Worldwide by Easyjet to create a system that will enable Aurigny customers to book connecting flights with a multitude of carriers to global destinations from UK airports.

Worldwide by Aurigny will also offer customers guaranteed connections for flights under the agreement, so you are covered for flight cancellations or delays.

The Eastern Airways agreement is being finalised and will be fully operational in a few weeks.

Worldwide by Aurigny is a longer-term project expected to launch by the end of the year.