Aurigny needs to look at its infrastructure and money it wastes in light of high fares

A flight from Cyprus to Gatwick with easyJet was £146.

A flight from Gatwick to Guernsey with Aurigny was £135.30.

With these excessive charges of Aurigny, why do they have to keep going cap in hand begging money from the States (us taxpayers)?

If I ran my business so badly I would be bankrupt.

Maybe they should look at their infrastructure and waste.

Let's face it, if you can fly one of our planes (our) to England and back I'm sure the flight and cabin crew could make their own sandwiches rather than running up a bill of £24,000 a year, helping to bring down the price of tickets.

Jersey has a larger finance industry than Guernsey without their own airline so why do we need one? Bring on easyJet.

K. RENOUF (Miss),

Cobo.

Editor's footnote: Euan Mahy, Aurigny's media relations manager, replies:

Thank you for allowing us to respond to this passenger's concerns.

We offer fully flexible fares on all our flights meaning passengers can make as many changes as they like, with no extra charge. Most people, however, choose to book our lower priced, no refund, fee to change tickets.

Our £30 online change fee is similar, or cheaper, than that charged by most low cost operators.

But, when a ticket is changed at short notice, there is likely to be a fare uplift as the price of flights generally increases as the departure time gets closer.

We looked at easyJet's prices between Larnaca and Gatwick on 12 August for a flight one week later and they varied between 340 and 550 euros one way, minus baggage.

Clearly, your correspondent was fortunate in achieving the price he did but Aurigny offer 20kg of free hold baggage; easyJet charge £30 for this.

Aurigny is owned by the Treasury and Resources department of the States of Guernsey although we operate as a commercial business. T&R guarantee borrowing for significant capital investments, like our Embraer 195 jet and our new Dornier 228, but we pay them commercial interest on the investment. We meet with T&R regularly and the relationship is a business one.

It came about because the States quite correctly wanted to protect the lifeline Gatwick route and the only way this could be achieved was by owning our airline, and therefore its Gatwick slots.

This security is not offered by commercial operators into Jersey.

Aurigny operates an extensive daily schedule both inter island and to the UK and France. Turnarounds both here, and at our UK airports are tight, typically 30 to 40 minutes.

Our crews work eight hour shifts and need to eat, at the very least for health and safety reasons, to make sure they're functioning at their best.

This why we provide our aircrew with freshly made, locally sourced, sandwiches and salads.