And it has declined to provide any information about the terms and conditions attached to the Aurigny Public Service Obligation contract for Alderney operations, citing commercial confidentiality and the fact that the company, as a separate legal entity, sits outside of the Freedom of Information code.
Questions posed under FoI included one asking for information about the deal between Aurigny and Skybus.
‘Except for having been provided with some assurance around certain aspects of the contract, the States do not have a copy and have not seen its contents,’ said the Policy & Resources Committee in response.
However, it did provide information about sanctions that could be applied to the airline in the event of non-performance.
It said that the airline was required to meet a number of quality requirements and key performance indicators and these were the subject of monthly reports.
Should these not be met, then the States could raise a contract performance failure notice, which would need Aurigny and, in turn, Skybus, to respond within 10 days and come up with a remedial action plan.
That plan would stay in place until the notice was withdrawn and the failure resolved.
The States also has the option to terminate an agreement if Aurigny fails to meet any one of the service levels set out in the KPIs in any three months – consecutive or separate – within a six-month period, or fails to meet the service levels on at least 50% of all occasions over any six-month rolling period.
‘The approach, first and foremost, has been to work collaboratively and constructively with Aurigny to manage and improve performance,’ said P&R.
Further to a question about the definition of performance or non-performance involving the Skybus contract, P&R said this would be covered by the KPI arrangement.
That covered passenger service, the patient transfer service, aircraft requirements, health and safety requirements and compliance with statutory requirements governing aircraft operations.
The contract between Skybus and Aurigny to operate Twin Otter aircraft into Alderney came into effect in November. The airline and the States have defended the performance statistics but people in Alderney remain unhappy and matters came to a head when a protest meeting was arranged at the airport in the spring.
Meanwhile, Skybus is attracting significant criticism at its home base in the Scilly Isles and south-west of England and has lost two senior figures in the business in recent weeks.