The airline has released more details about the incident, which took place when arriving in Guernsey from Gatwick.
‘We can confirm that aircraft G-PEMB is currently out of service following a tail strike,’ an airline spokeswoman said.
‘Our engineering team is working closely with our partners to fully assess the extent of the damage and determine the timeline for its safe return to service.
‘In the meantime, our operations team has reviewed the flying programme and is implementing additional aircraft resilience measures through ACMI (aircraft, crew, maintenance and insurance) arrangements, as necessary.
‘We remain committed to maintaining a reliable and safe service for our customers.’
A tail strike can occur during take-off or landing and can result in substantial aircraft damage.
The International Air Transport Association states that tail strike events accounted for 9% of all accidents between 2013 and 2022. Most occur during landing, with common contributing factors being unstable approaches, crosswinds and turbulence.
The airline had other troubles this week, after the airline’s other long-leased ATR – G-PBOT – had to turn back to Guernsey on Tuesday afternoon, after taking off on a service to London City.
The plane took off towards the west as normal but as it came over Rocquaine the aircraft flew back across Guernsey and then over the French Cotentin Peninsula, before turning back towards Guernsey and landing. The plane was in the air for about 30 minutes.
The London City to Guernsey return service was also cancelled.
An Aurigny spokesman said there had been a technical issue with the plane.
‘The aircraft landed as normal and the team is rebooking all affected customers onto the next available service,’ he said.
G-PBOT was back in service yesterday and operated the Gatwick red eye service.
Aurigny has been working to ensure services have been able to operate, which has included leasing planes from Titan Airways and Eastern Airways.
Services have also not been running smoothly for Blue Islands.
Tuesday afternoon’s flight from Southampton to Guernsey was delayed by three hours after the plane that was planned for the service, G-ISLO,was given a Southampton-Jersey rotation to do first instead.
This then had knock-on delays for following services.
The disruption comes after Blue Islands’ plane G-ISLL flew to Cranfield Airport on Tuesday afternoon.
G-ISLO ended up flying 12 flights on Tuesday.
There were further issues with the Southampton services yesterday, as Blue Islands was again operating all its services with just two planes.
The route is shared with Aurigny and Blue Islands, and while the red eye Southampton services were operated on time by Aurigny, the 2.30pm Blue Islands-operated service to Southampton did not depart until 7.50pm which was expected to cause knock-on delays for the return leg. The evening Southampton rotation was cancelled.
G-ISLL was expected to return to the Channel Islands last night.
Blue Islands fourth plane G-ISLN has been out of service for some time, while the newly-leased G-ISLP has not yet entered service.
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