Being 'flexible' did not make any difference
I AM writing in response to your reader's letter titled 'Booking early with airline still results in expensive fares' in your paper today (29 October 2016). I too had been waiting for flights to be released, although not for Easter 2017, but for May 2017, which is even further away. I was hoping that by booking more than seven months in advance we would be able to get a cheap price. I had been checking the website every single day since July hoping to get the best price. When they were finally released it turns out we would be paying in excess of £600 for two adults, two children. We needed to be in the UK on Saturday 27 May, returning Saturday 3 June, so to try and be flexible we decided to go a day earlier and return a day later, resulting in the need to take our children out of school for a day. But by being flexible, as the Aurigny spokesperson suggests, this does not make a blind bit of difference, it only gives us the added guilt of taking the children out of school for one day.
So it's all well and good Aurigny saying you should be flexible, but that is not always possible. What are we supposed to do, go two days in advance and take the children out of school for two days instead of one? Plus needing a hotel for those extra nights (which for a family of four is not cheap).
It is not fair on the people who are limited by childcare/school holidays etc. We are the ones who have to pay the premium. Do you not think that perhaps if Aurigny made it cheaper for families and other travellers to get off the island, more people would book flights?
FIONA SARRE, (Mrs),
Address withheld.
Editor's footnote: Malcolm Coupar, commercial director of Aurigny, responds: We thank your reader for their letter as pricing is a very important issue to us as we understand it affects islanders' travel plans, especially for families and groups.
We appreciate the reader was flexible with their booking dates and looked early. At peak times, such as bank holidays and school half-terms or holidays when the reader is travelling, we try our best to keep prices as low as possible or as close to our average ticket prices as possible and booking early will allow travellers to make the most of these prices.
The ticket prices are largely based on the standard operating costs that have to be taken into account for each person's travel. The average one-way ticket price is £80 per person and within this a variety of costs require covering. These include airport and air traffic control charges (£27), maintenance and crew (£40), fuel (£8), ground handling (£10) and overheads (£3). This means that the average cost is £88 for a person's one-way travel. Therefore, while we do everything we can to keep our prices as low as possible, there is still a cost deficit on our average ticket prices.
The Policy & Resources Committee is currently conducting a strategic review of Aurigny which we very much support. Part of this will include considering pricing models such as the possibility of lowering prices with the aim of encouraging more passengers, and looking at the delicate balance this requires, as more passengers could result in new costs for the airline, airport and other supporting organisations. We welcome the outcomes of the review as ultimately our goal is to provide safe and affordable travel for islanders and visitors.
If you would like to discuss your particular travel requirements further, please do not hesitate to contact our customer relations team on 01481 266465 (Monday-Friday 0900-1700) or on customerrelations@aurigny.com.
