Gama Aviation (UK) Ltd is seeking a judicial review of the process in the Ordinary Division of the Royal Court and ultimately wants the decision to award the contract to 247 Aviation Ltd to be quashed.
Guernsey and Jersey’s governments conducted a joint tender process earlier this year, which concluded with the islands judging that 247 offered the best service proposal and value for money.
It is due to take over the service from the end of the current arrangement in December.
The hearing started yesterday in front of Lt-Bailiff Hazel Marshall, with Advocate Michael Adkins, for Gama, outlining three grounds on which the company bases its case against the States, which was acting through Health & Social Care.
One of these grounds concerned a late change of aircraft requested by Jersey, another was that there was a lack of transparency in the reasons and scoring of the tenders by Guernsey, and the third was irrationality in the evaluation of the scoring.
‘It is the process that is the subject of the challenge,’ said Advocate Adkins.
Referring to the scores given to each applicant at the end of the process, he said it was as important to know why 247 won the tender as it was to understand why Gama lost.
Gama took issue with the reasons given for the scoring, he said.
Advocate Adkins also argued that the language used in summarising the bids showed that they had been compared directly with each other, but the procurement procedures were that this should not happen during the moderation stage, and that each bid should be given a score based on criteria assessed independently of the other bids.
The States is being represented by Advocate Penny Grainge and is set to oppose the review, including on the grounds that the call for it is unfair, since a public body such as HSC had to make a decision which was in the public interest.
But Advocate Adkins said it could do this only if there were no plausible allegations that the decision was not reached in accordance with the law.
The air ambulance service transfers critically ill patients to the UK for emergency treatment that is not available locally.
About 280 patients from Guernsey are flown to the UK through the service each year.
Gama Aviation has provided the service in Guernsey and Jersey since August 2020.
It operates a Beechcraft King Air B200 aircraft, which has provided a 24-hour, 365-days-a-year service between the Channel Islands and UK health services.