Guernsey Press

Name one airline that would fly here on condition of an extended runway...

AS TIM ROBINS has mentioned me by name in the letter that appeared on 24 June 2017, I would like to put the record straight. I was born and brought up on the island and have worked for more than four decades in the hospitality, tourism and travel industry, not just on Guernsey but worldwide. Furthermore, I travel frequently back to Guernsey and keep myself well-informed on local matters, including those related to the tourism and aviation industries. The question of whether to extend the runway, or not, is not about protecting the state-owned airline, Aurigny, or the excessive amount of losses that that airline incurs. Nor is it about improving the island's air links. Those are other issues that need, and can be, addressed, as elaborated on in the Strategic Air Links Report of 2015 and the more recent Aurigny Review. Nor should it be about emotive issues and philosophies such as 'showing the island is open for business', 'build it and they will come', 'being better than Jersey' or replicating the 'brave visionary decisions taken in the 19th century'. It is about whether the massive cost of £30m. and more, plus the disruption caused during the construction itself, the closing of La Villiaze Road, the enormous landfill required over and beyond that road, the loss of agricultural land and buildings plus the potential damage to the environment in that particular part of the island, is worth it and will bring additional benefits to the island.

Published

It is my contention that it is not and I base my opinion on concrete facts. Facts that I have researched myself, and that I have gleaned from other persons, employed in the airline business, past and present, including at least one Airbus pilot. I would like very much to be wrong... I would love to be able to fly direct to Guernsey from, say, Zurich or Berlin, or even Rome, and preferably in an Airbus or Embraer and not in a smaller ATR 72, as opposed to just from the likes of Gatwick, London City or Manchester. But the facts tell me that, unfortunately, it is not going to happen, no matter how far the runway is extended.

The facts are these:

The island of Guernsey has a population of just over 60,000, while the population of Jersey is two-thirds more at about 103,000. Jersey also has more than double the number of tourist beds, at 10,750. That means that Jersey offers a much larger market for air travel and is therefore a much greater attraction for airlines.

Therefore, it is not surprising to see that more airlines fly to Jersey, and on more routes, than to Guernsey, and, historically, Jersey Airport has always handled more passengers than Guernsey Airport: look back 40 years and we see that Jersey Airport handled, in 1976, about 1.37m. passengers while Guernsey only had 510,000. Twenty years later, in 1996, Jersey had 1.67m. and Guernsey 882,000. Move on another 20 years, and to last year, and Jersey handled 1.61m. while Guernsey had 874,000. Despite Jersey having the longer runway, Guernsey enjoyed the much better growth in passenger numbers from 1976 to 1996, but both airports appear to have now peaked. Yes, for the past 20 years there have been fluctuations, with increases some years and decreases during other years, but, overall, demand for the two islands' airports appear to has flat-lined with Jersey having 80-90% more passengers every year than Guernsey; due not so much because of the length of runway but because Jersey, in having the larger population and more than double the tourist beds, has the much greater demand for air travel.

The greatest concern at the moment should be the fact that, in very recent years, although Guernsey Airport has seen a slight increase in passenger traffic to the UK and the Continent, it has suffered from a serious decline in inter-island passengers, especially on the Jersey route. Last year there were almost 36,000 fewer passengers on that Jersey route than five years previously in 2011 – that is a staggering 24% drop. Extending the runway will not address that issue.

Realistically speaking, Guernsey does not generate enough demand for air travel to support any new routes unless, maybe, operated by smaller aircraft. There are the aircraft and the airlines out there that could operate on routes to Guernsey from the likes of Glasgow, Dublin, Paris, Amsterdam, or Zurich. The following airlines have aircraft capable of operating from their home bases to Guernsey, with its existing runway and with a full complement of passengers and without needing to stop to refuel in Jersey: From the UK and Ireland – BA's Cityflyer, Cityjet, Stobart, Loganair, Eastern Airways and BMI Regional, while from the Continent there is Austrian Airways, Air France, Regional, Airlinair, Iberia Regional, Luxair, KLM Cityhopper, Swiss, Skywork, Helvetic, Etihad Regional, Lufthansa Cityline, Alitalia Cityliner, TAP Express, Danish Air Transport, Sun-Air and Air Berlin. Why do none of these airlines fly to Guernsey? Because the demand for their services on routes to Guernsey is too low.

Air Berlin used to fly to Guernsey and Jersey, but they ceased those flights, not because of the runway, but because they have undergone a major restructuring following losses of over 400m. euros in 2015. They cut the number of destinations served from 140 down to about 70 while trimming their fleet down to just the Airbus A320 and the Bombadier Dash 8-400 – the latter of which they have 20 of, and, as we all know, these aircraft are perfectly able to operate to Guernsey. I would like to add that, in contradiction to Mr Robins' claim, Alitalia could operate their Embraer E90s into Guernsey from either Milan Linate or Rome airports as they also fly a similar distance to London City Airport and, as known by all, that airport has a similar length runway to Guernsey's.

The above-listed airlines, and many more further afield, operate fleets of aircraft from the older ATR 42s, the SAAB 340s, the Dornier 328s, the Fokker 50s and 100s, the RJ85s and RJ100s to the more modern ATR 72-500s, Dash 8-400s, the Airbus A318s, and the Embraer E170-E195 series, right up to the even newer ATR 72-600s, the Bombadier C-Series, the Sukhoi Superjet 100s and the Embraer E175-E195 E2 series. The Embraer E190 and E195 E2 series is a new development that offers slightly more seating capacity, better fuel economy and shortened landing and take-off distances. Far from becoming an extinct species, demand is increasing for newer and better small regional airliners to serve on the low demand, but vitally important, feeder routes criss-crossing Europe, such as Geneva-Milan, Stuttgart-Zurich or Paris-Luxembourg. These airports all have long runways of 3,000 metres or more, but they still need smaller aircraft to maintain routes that simply do not have the passenger traffic to warrant larger aircraft. Guernsey Airport fits into this category – it is served already by routes to 17 destinations, but none of them, with the exception of Gatwick and possibly Manchester, Southampton and Jersey, have enough demand to support the introduction of larger aircraft. As for the latter three of those airports, if larger aircraft, such as the Airbus A320 with 180 seats, were to be introduced, the number of rotations per day would drop, at most, to just two each for Southampton and Jersey and one for Manchester – and even then the flights would only be, at best, 70–75% full. The airlines would need to keep fares high and the public would suffer from the inconvenience of having less choice in available flight times. As we have seen with Aurigny, when they switched from the ATR 72 with 72 seats to the larger Embraer E-195 with 122 seats, air fares do not automatically drop with the introduction of a larger aircraft.

So, if Guernsey has difficulty in attracting new airlines to open up new routes using small regional aircraft because the demand for such routes is not there, what hope does it have to attract those airlines that do not have such smaller aircraft but rely only on the larger Airbus and Boeing aircraft? One very clear and indisputable fact is that not a single airline has been identified that would come to Guernsey on condition the runway was extended.

Mr Robins has mentioned the BAe Systems Report of 2003, but that, like the Halcrow Report of 2001, was unable to identify any possible airlines that would be attracted if the runway was extended or any possible increase in routes or passenger numbers. Furthermore, the more recent York Aviation Report of 2009 and the Strategic Air Links Report of 2015 both recommended that a runway extension, at those times, was not needed. Has the situation changed since then? No. So if one wishes to ignore the facts as laid down by those reports, then maybe one could listen to the opinions of those persons in Guernsey who have the most relevant local airline experience – Messrs. Hart, Darby and Veron. Have they not all advised against extending the runway? One may claim that their advice is biased and they would be against a runway extension, anyway, because of their fears of more competition, but not so. Their airlines' routes are protected – the current licensing system does that. Not even the Gatwick route, which generates one third of all Guernsey Airport passenger traffic and which is probably the only route that could justify multiple-daily rotations using an aircraft of more than 150 seats, will be opened up to competition. No. What they fear is that, should the runway be extended, almost certainly no new airlines will fly in and passenger numbers will not significantly rise, so that Aurigny and Flybe will be the two airlines left to face the higher airport fees that will have to be introduced to pay for the runway extension, as well as for the additional operating costs, and that will lead to higher fares, fewer passengers, more losses for the airlines and more staff losing their jobs.

Guernsey Airport underwent a massive restructuring in recent years which included flattening the runway, shifting it 120 metres to the west, (so that the runway end safety areas could be extended to conform better to CAA recommendations) and strengthening the runway to accommodate heavier aircraft. Guernsey Airport has, as before the work, a runway of 1,463 metres, but at the eastern end there is now a take-off extension that means that the take-off distance, for aircraft taking off to the west, which is the case for the majority of flights, has now become 1,583 metres – only about 120 metres shorter than Jersey. It is possible for an Airbus A319 or A320 to operate into Guernsey on a short-haul route, such as the Gatwick route, although not fully loaded, especially if taking off to the east in wet weather. I have consulted an Airbus pilot who calculated that the number of seats that could be sold for a flight in those conditions would be about 125, or 80% full if using the 156-seater A319. (Aurigny's E-195 last year achieved an average load factor of 74%). Older versions of the Boeing 737, the 300 to 500 series, as well as the Airbus A320, have already operated to Guernsey on passenger flights, most recently by Titan Airways on behalf of Aurigny. Easyjet were very keen to start Guernsey-Gatwick flights and, according to the Strategic Air Link investigation transcripts, as well as other reports, they were discouraged, not by the length of the runway, but by the protectionist stance of the then Treasury and Resources Committee.

It should also be noted that should the runway be extended to slightly more than Jersey's, it will, like Jersey, still not be able to accommodate the newer and larger B737-800s, B737-900s and Airbus A321s. So that rules out any approach to the likes of Ryanair, Norwegian and Thomson Airways.

Finally, London City Airport has a runway length very similar to Guernsey but with much more stringent restrictions on landing and take-off. So much so that even the Aurigny Embraer 195 can not operate there. And yet, that airport welcomes over a dozen different airlines, serving almost 50 destinations, and handles every year over 4.5m. passengers.

Quite frankly, the facts speak for themselves.

Not only is it ill-advised to extend the runway, as it will be such an enormous burden on the island without bringing any benefits, it is folly to even contemplate spending tens of thousands, or maybe even a hundred thousand, pounds on yet another consultant's report.

ALVIN J. FURRER,

4, El Tawfiq Street,

Cairo,

Egypt.

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