Guernsey Press

Decision time for Heathrow subsidy

WHILE the costs of the Heathrow air link are well known, its value is harder to judge.

Published

Economic Development now has the task of balancing the knowns and the unknowns to decide whether to continue spending more than a million pounds a year subsidising the London link.

What we do know is that passengers like the service. Up to the end of July, with more than half of the seven-month trial completed, there have been 12,812 passenger movements.

That’s a very respectable average capacity for each daily flight to Heathrow of about 67%.

With August, September and October to come and the service picking up familiarity with each passing month, the number of passenger movements (as opposed to passengers) should easily exceed 22,000 by the end of the trial.

However, that comes at a high price. At current rates, it is costing the island almost £40 per passenger per flight. It’s a healthy subsidy which any airline would love to have.

Not all of that is in direct cash: £147,000 of the original £875,000 comes through the airport’s route discount policy, including reduced landing charges. The rest is from the Future Guernsey economic slush fund.

Has it brought passengers’ great value? As ever, it depends when and what you book as single flights leading up to the October cut-off go from as little as £34 to as much as £110.

The other great unknown is the cost to the taxpayers’ airline.

Aurigny’s Gatwick and Stansted routes have seen passenger numbers drop from last year to this.

In the last three months, the two routes combined have fallen by 10,000 passengers.

How much of that is Heathrow’s fault is hard to judge. Blue Islands’ new route to London Southend has also carried 2,000 passengers over the summer, many of whom might have gone to Gatwick.

Aurigny is on record saying the Heathrow route cost it £80,000 in May alone.

With total losses of £4.4m. last year the taxpayer needs the most profitable routes of the islanders’ airline to pay healthy dividends.

Economic Development must therefore be certain that Heathrow provides not just a valued service for the islands but value for money.