The airline lost managing director Jonathan Hinkles this week and the chairman of the group has written to island residents to apologise for service levels this year.
Ian Howard, chairman of the Isles of Scilly Steamship Group, admitted that the airline had started Alderney services late last year before it had taken delivery of the aircraft it needed and trained the pilots required.
Skybus operates the flights on behalf of Aurigny, which said yesterday that it was engaging with the airline.
‘We expect Skybus to now deliver a strong improvement in the service,’ said chief commercial officer Philip Saunders.
Alderney has seen significant disruption to flights so far this year through a combination of technical problems with the Twin Otter aircraft, pilot shortages and weather delays.
Mr Howard described it as a ‘difficult few months’ for the group, with a knock-on impact on Skybus services on its home patch.
‘Skybus is a lifeline service for the Isles of Scilly and when we fail to deliver the level of service that our community expects, the consequences are significant,’ he wrote in a message to the islands’ community.
‘I fully understand the frustration and disappointment that many people are feeling.
‘Essentially, in taking on the Alderney to Guernsey route for Aurigny before we had taken delivery of the additional Twin Otters needed to service it, we spread ourselves too thin.’
As well as the lack of aircraft, the airline took longer than expected to recruit and train up the additional pilots needed to meet its commitments to both Alderney and Scilly.
The situation was not helped by damage to the airline’s maintenance hangar and one of its planes by Storm Goretti.
But Mr Howard stressed that he believed taking on the Alderney route was right for the business. ‘Strategically the expansion of our routes to the Channel Islands was absolutely the right thing to do to make Skybus sustainable in the future,’ he said.
‘Operating additional year-round services elsewhere generates additional revenue and enables us to strengthen the resilience of the service to Scilly, but we now recognise the full impact of the problems we have caused the Scilly community. Our plans were far too optimistic in timescale.’
Customers were assured that there would be improvements for the imminent peak holiday season.
Skybus now has one more Otter, with another due to arrive shortly, and should be ready to provide additional support and more pilot training from early next month.
For Aurigny, Mr Saunders said that there were no surprises in the message from Mr Howard.
‘Skybus is capable of delivering the service and have illustrated this already. But there have been significant challenges caused by delays in providing two aircraft on island and a shortage of trained pilots.
‘We’re committed to working closely with Skybus to deliver every single day to provide the service our islanders rightly expect.
‘As far as our airline is concerned, it’s business as usual.’