Last-minute seats need protecting, says Aurigny
I HAVE just read Martin Nickolls' letter on the relative costs of flying to Gatwick and Malcolm Coupar's response. Mr Coupar, when Aurigny starts to turn in a profit, you can boast about some of your flights being 85% full. Until then, why not stop penalising customers who, for whatever reason, are unable to book three months-plus in advance?
You could have been 90%-plus full if you had offered Martin a reasonable fare. As for suggesting that people were not booking with Flybe in case they decided to pull out of the route early and not honour their bookings, well, I will leave Flybe to answer that.
Name and address withheld.
watty@cwgsy.net.
Editor's footnote: Malcolm Coupar responds:
'Thank you for the opportunity to respond to your correspondent's letter.
Looking at our bookings, I can see that your correspondent's flight was 85% full at the time he tried to book the flights and we would expect it to be even fuller by the time the aircraft departs. A large part of our business is servicing the requirements of our business community, who often need to make last-minute bookings. We need to protect seats (keep them open) for people who book late for whatever reason – that's one reason why we don't sell them all cheaply.
If they were all sold at budget rates then there would be none left for our large "last-minute" market. I hope this explains our policy.'
