New Heathrow link could threaten Gatwick slots

The States has opened talks with an airline, believed to be British Airways, about providing financial support to revive a jet service to Heathrow.

An initial proposal is understood to have focused on launching a service in the autumn, with flights on several days each week, if the States agrees to some form of subsidy, expected to amount to hundreds of thousands of pounds a year.

But Peter Roffey, president of the States’ Trading Supervisory Board, Aurigny’s shareholder, warned that pumping public money into another London route would do little to increase passenger numbers overall and could have dire consequences for the stability of the island’s air links.

‘It may well mean that the States could no longer insist on Aurigny maintaining all of its current slots at Gatwick, completely undermining the reason we bought Aurigny,’ he said.

‘If the subsidised Heathrow link was ever to disappear, there would be no guarantee that we could get those Gatwick slots back, severely undermining Guernsey’s connectivity with the capital.’

Economic Development president Deputy Neil Inder confirmed that his committee was now ‘keeping a watching brief on Heathrow links’ and said he also wanted ‘to manage expectations that there is unlikely to be movement until the next States term’.

Aurigny declined to speak about a rival airline flying between Guernsey and Heathrow but issued a statement suggesting that it was already providing the links to London which the island needed.

‘In 2024, Aurigny directly sought customer feedback to help select and enhance connectivity to and from the London market,’ said a spokesman.

‘The response from the business community supported the introduction of our successful London City service, which, alongside our more frequent London Gatwick services, has already led to a 29% increase in flight frequency across the London airport catchment areas.’

Deputy Roffey predicted ‘significant passenger migration’ to the new route and ‘resultant losses’ for Aurigny.

‘Subsidising an airline to operate on one part of the wider Guernsey-London route, while insisting that your own airline maintains current capacity on another part of that crucial connection, is fraught with risk,’ he said.

Deputy Roffey emphasised that these were his personal views and that his board’s position would become clearer only after it holds discussions on the matter later this week.