‘We have been so let down with so many cancellations of flights over the months and it’s got progressively worse in the last couple of weeks,’ said Andrew Eggleston.
Earlier this year the chamber conducted a survey into how businesses in the island had been affected by flight disruption. Mr Eggleston said it had received about 70 replies, which almost all talked about annoyance and frustration.
‘People are starting to think that Alderney is almost looked at like a backwater, “out of sight, out of mind”,’ he said. ‘Like a naughty schoolboy who’s been told to stand in the corner wearing a dunce cap.’
In its latest survey of businesses there are only three questions – is the business being affected by the service provided by Aurigny and Skybus, and if so, to what extent, and how do businesses see the way forward.
The plan is for the answers to be put into a report to be sent to Guernsey’s Policy & Resources Committee, the States Trading Supervisory Board and Economic Development.
Alderney flights started to return to a more normal operating pattern late last week after several days of disruption caused by crew sickness.
Mr Eggleston said the issue seemed to be finding pilots to crew the Twin Otter flights between the island and Guernsey and Southampton. He cited a comment from Skybus that it had probably taken on the Alderney route before it was ready.
While people accepted that there were going to be occasional problems due to the weather, he said there had been a lot of unrelated delays and cancellations this year, which had impacted on businesses from finance to hospitality and even his own business as an estate agent.
‘We’ve had three people coming to look at properties but they couldn’t get here and they’re wondering why they’re buying a house here when they can’t get here,’ he said.
He understood that a pilot shortage had led to occasional cancellations of the first and last flights of the day to the island.
‘Normally there’d be one crew for the morning and one for the afternoon and they’ve not been able to guarantee that. We know that Aurigny have been knocking off the first flight of the day from Guernsey and the last flight back to Guernsey because then one set of pilots can do the rest of the flights that day.’
He also said that Aurigny was going to be basing one of its Twin Otters in Southampton and he hoped that might help address the pilot shortage.
Aurigny’s chief commercial officer Philip Saunders confirmed the move to have one of the Twin Otters based in Southampton and said that would be for the coming winter and into next summer. ‘We believe we’ll be able to offer a more attractive schedule as a result,’ he said.
He accepted that changes sometimes had to be made to the schedule owing to crew issues and recently the situation had been compounded by a Civil Aviation Authority audit taking place, which required the presence of Skybus pilots, plus a lot of crew sickness in the past couple of weeks.
Mr Saunders said he understood islanders’ frustrations and had apologised unreservedly to Alderney residents for any disruption.
‘Whatever the causes we do understand very much how this frustrates people, the impact it has on people’s often long-arranged plans.’
Skybus’ CEO Stuart Reid echoed this apology and stressed that the company was committed to working with Aurigny to improve the service.
Mr Saunders said Skybus had told him that the two dedicated aircraft for Alderney would be arriving by the end of the month and these had been refitted and brought up to date and should be much more reliable.
Alderney Chamber of Commerce’s questions can be found on the Alderney Business Facebook page with responses requested by Friday 23 October.
You need to be logged in to comment.