Aurigny’s summer resilience questioned after major disruption

A standby aircraft was brought in to help, but that was affected by a shortage of crew. While some flights were cancelled, others were delayed, with passengers reporting waiting up to 11 hours at one point.

The problems started on Friday and led to the 1.30pm flight to Bristol eventually getting off the ground at 9.42pm. As a result, the return plane from Bristol did not land until just before midnight. Friday flights to Birmingham, Gatwick and Manchester were cancelled. Gatwick, Manchester and Southampton routes were affected on Saturday, although later flights arrived within an hour of the scheduled times.

‘Flight changed at short notice, long delays leading to rebooking for another flight tomorrow only to find the same thing has happened again today,’ one customer wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Saturday. ‘Result… booking cancelled and not going anywhere now.’

Aurigny posted an apology on its website’s disruptions page, saying that planned annual maintenance on a Dornier and an ATR had ‘coincided with unforeseen and separate technical events’ that impacted both the Embraer and the ATR fleet.

‘These technical difficulties were further compounded by challenging weather conditions this week, and our recovery efforts were constrained by a shortage of crew from one of our standby aircraft capacity suppliers.’

It said that Guernsey Airport had granted extensions throughout the week to help maximise the number of flights the airline could operate with its available planes and Aurigny looked, where possible, to contract in third-party capacity.

While one aircraft returned to service yesterday morning, another was due back today.

But there continued to be issues with the schedule, which saw flights to and from Exeter cancelled along with the 6.55pm inbound flight from Gatwick.

A relative of a passenger due to fly to Exeter said their relative was put onto the 2pm to Bristol and on arrival passengers would be coached to Exeter.

Aurigny anticipated that services would be back to normal by the end of the weekend, but warned that ‘service resilience will continue to be fragile during March’ as planned maintenance continued.

It is the future stretching into summer that concerns the GHA, whose board issued a statement over the weekend.

‘At the moment we are very concerned if this past week is a taste of what is to come,’ it said.

‘Over the past few weeks Aurigny had to lease in two ATR 72 props, an Embraer 190 jet, and an Airbus 320 jet, together with crews,’ it said, adding that the Airbus could operate only at about 60% capacity because of the island’s runway constraints.

‘The question we would pose is – if this is the situation in the low-season, what confidence can we have that such aircraft and crew will be available to lease in the high season?’

It was particularly concerned with additional routes due to be added to the schedule, such as Paris, Dublin, London City, Liverpool and Stansted.

‘Our members and the general public are raising concerns as to whether our air connectivity is fit for purpose. Where is the leadership taking us? Is there a plan to fully service Guernsey and our industry? And if so, what will the cost be?’