Jonathan Hinkles: Your local airlines need your support

The last four years have subjected the whole airline industry to severe turbulence like never before – yet although the pandemic thankfully is far behind us, challenges of a different kind with their origins in the pandemic are now taking centre stage.

Behind every safe flight taking place is a huge backstage support team, often working away in large workshops to overhaul, repair and manufacture key components like aircraft engines, propeller blades and undercarriage legs. Closure of these workshops during the pandemic led to huge backlogs that are now creating havoc for airlines reliant on timely overhaul of these essential parts, whether for aircraft deliveries or major maintenance checks on existing aircraft.

Issues affecting Boeing and Airbus aircraft are never far from the front pages at the moment, but the impact is even more acute on the regional airline sector. Need a nose landing gear leg for an ATR aircraft? Good luck. One UK airline has recently had an aircraft grounded for five months waiting for one. Suffer the misfortune of a bird strike on a propeller blade? Three weeks’ grounding, if you’re lucky.

And on it goes.

What this means is that airlines today are under significant pressure, where aircraft downtime for both planned maintenance and unforeseen day-to-day operational issues extends from days to weeks and months. This why we now see airlines struggling to maintain schedules, and I’m afraid there’s hardly anything they can do about it.

Airlines do everything they can to run flights on time. It’s the most cost-effective way to operate, and it keeps customers happy. No one benefits from delays and cancellations, but sometimes – despite all endeavours – they can and do happen. Against that background, it’s risible for some commentators to call for guarantees that flight disruption will be eradicated. It’s just as impossible for an airline chief to give such a warranty as it is plainly daft for anyone to demand it.

Faced with the unwelcome local impact of these global issues on Aurigny, there have been calls for Guernsey to bring in easyJet and the like. As someone who’s spent much time in recent years building and safeguarding air services to island communities, let me try to set out why this course of action is exactly what Guernsey must now avoid.

Low-cost carriers dip in and out of markets, offering flights only when there are profits to be made. Using the Isle of Man as an example, easyJet has up to seven flights there across five routes on a Friday in June. What’s not to like, you say? Well, there are points in January and February when not a single easyJet aircraft goes near the Isle of Man for up to three days at a time. Not so great.

Island communities need dependable year-round, day-in and day-out connectivity. Airlines like easyJet want to make profits. The two concepts don’t sit comfortably together. Bluntly put, if an incoming low-cost airline runs off with the summer profits, your local airline will need an unprecedented level of financial support from the States of Guernsey to keep even a skeletal essential air service open through the leaner winter months.

Do low-cost airlines even grow passenger numbers and tourism in the Channel Islands? Well, easyJet is Jersey’s largest airline, measured by volume of passengers. In 2023, a total of 1.47 million passengers used Jersey Airport versus 1.41 million in 1993 – long before easyJet rocked up. In Guernsey too, passenger numbers have barely changed in that 30-year timeframe, despite having no low-cost airline: 723,000 used the airport in 1993 versus 694,000 in 2023. There’s no ‘poor relation’ argument (Jersey has easyJet and is doing better than Guernsey) here. Where easyJet flies 700,000 passengers a year to and from Jersey, those same passenger numbers were being flown 30 years ago by now-forgotten airlines like Jersey European and Air UK.

It doesn’t stop there.

Every ticket you buy from your local airline directly maintains jobs in the local community for pilots, cabin crew, engineers and ground staff – a form of circular economy, if you like. Low-cost carriers base their aircraft and crews at major 24/7 airports like Gatwick and Manchester, so the local benefit felt today from your spending on air tickets would be exported off-island.

The range and frequency of services that the island enjoys through having locally-based airlines would also suffer if low-cost carriers are cleared to land in Guernsey. You certainly wouldn’t have a choice of six flights a day to Gatwick – perhaps two at best, one on most days and none in the winter. You might have a Manchester flight on three days a week in summer, and could forget about East Midlands, Liverpool or other places to which you can presently fly.

One of the main arguments of late has been about reliability of services. It is indeed hugely important. Yet if you’re an advocate of bringing in a low-cost carrier to benefit from improved punctuality, I’m afraid that I’ve news for you there, too.

I should caveat what I’m about to say with recognition that last summer at Gatwick was really difficult for everyone with ongoing air traffic control staffing problems. Yet UK CAA figures for July 2023 show Aurigny managed 59% of Gatwick-Guernsey flights on time and flew 97% of its schedule. Only 20% of easyJet’s Gatwick-Isle of Man flights were on time, and it flew just 85% of its schedule. Flying from the same airport (Gatwick), you were thus twice as likely to be delayed and five times more likely to have your flight cancelled with easyJet to Isle of Man than with Aurigny to Guernsey.

That should knock the debate on the head straight away. And there’s a reason for it. Low-cost carriers tack quick out-and-back trips like Isle of Man and Jersey onto the end of an aircraft and crew’s working day after they’ve been off from Gatwick to some Mediterranean hotspot. Aircraft regularly land back late from those sunshine trips, delaying subsequent evening island flights or resulting in cancellations where it’s beyond airports’ closing times or the crew have overshot their permitted working time.

Airlines like Aurigny and Blue Islands don’t suffer these knock-on issues from far away in a foreign (air)field; indeed, Blue Islands was the UK’s most punctual airline last year.

It can be done.

Strong regional airlines with the community’s interests at heart; aircraft and crews based locally, and offering a broad range of year-round services, are essential ingredients for island connectivity. Both Guernsey and Jersey are fortunate to have Aurigny and Blue Islands to meet this need. Upset that equilibrium by lobbing a low-fare airline into the mix and the long-term ramifications for the islands’ air connectivity will be huge.

Your local airlines need you, just as island communities need the connectivity they provide. The best way to safeguard this is by supporting your local airline whenever you can by buying your ticket with them when choosing to travel. But when they do encounter issues – as every airline does from time to time – support must equally come in the form of understanding for the huge efforts that will be going into fixing problems like those Aurigny has recently faced.

It really is the only way, and I hope you’ll now see exactly why I believe that.