There were two Guernsey-Alderney rotations cancelled on Thursday afternoon after morning flights were delayed, although Aurigny said that it was questionable whether some of these would have operated anyway given the weather conditions.
Yesterday’s Alderney contingency plan was to have a 78-seater aircraft brought across to Guernsey by Skybus.
While passengers between Alderney and Guernsey were able to fly as booked, those heading to Southampton were due to fly via Guernsey.
But yesterday saw the Southampton route hit by ‘operational problems’ with some afternoon flights to and from Alderney and Guernsey cancelled.
Planes from Alderney arrived yesterday at 8.26am and 12.46pm.
The 6.45am flight from Guernsey to Southampton got off on time, but after the afternoon’s inbound plane, due to arrive at 2.45pm, was cancelled, so was the 3.15pm departure.
As of 5.30 yesterday afternoon there was no information about the scheduled 8.05pm flight to Southampton.
Departures to Alderney from Guernsey got off more or less on time until the 3.15pm, which left over an hour late and was followed by the cancellation of a flight at 4.35pm.
Aurigny said that today’s schedule from Alderney to both Guernsey and Southampton should run as usual, with a replacement Twin Otter due to arrive in the island yesterday evening.
This was the earliest that a plane was available owing to a routine maintenance check already being in progress when Thursday’s disruption occurred.
‘We sincerely apologise to customers for the disruption to flights over the last 24 hours, which has arisen from a technical issue with our aircraft in Guernsey,’ said Skybus MD Jonathan Hinkles yesterday.
A specialist engineer was dispatched immediately to work with Aurigny’s team in Guernsey.
Aurigny said that the reliability of the Twin Otter since it was brought in on 1 November has been better than the old Dornier 228 planes over the same period last year, with 54% fewer cancellations due to technical issues or operational requirements.
However, that improvement was overshadowed by disruption caused by bad weather which had been ‘markedly worse’ than in previous years.
Alderney’s senior political committee formally complained to the States about Aurigny’s performance in recent weeks this week, but the States Trading Supervisory Board said that the argument was not supported by the facts about service reliability.
Aurigny’s own Twin Otters have just received Civil Aviation Authority approval for the final element of the next-generation equipment installed on the planes, said the airline.
These will be the first in the UK to carry this new equipment, which was developed in Canada, and which required a long approval process between the CAA and its counterparts in Canada.
