Who Aurigny brings here is more important than its losses or profits
IT IS encouraging for businessmen to see that the number one priority for the Committee for Economic Development is connectivity in all its infrastructure forms including land, sea, air and digital. However, does there exist a proper study of the economic impact on Guernsey of this connectivity and, in particular, air and Aurigny? We only hear about its losses but there isn’t a ‘flag carrier’ in the world which makes a reasonable commercial return. And Aurigny is handicapped more than most by being a purely domestic operator for a population which can only sustain a limited number of routes, times and competition.
Some companies, mostly financial, may bring to our island only thousands of pounds in air fares every year but also bring a large multiple of that sum in revenues, with a multiplier effect on the economy. The associated employment and income for Guernsey must be out of all proportion to the accounting losses of Aurigny. There may be those in Guernsey who don’t care about this issue because they never go near the airport. But even they will most likely be making a living that is inevitably derived in some measure from the ability of others to fly on to or off this island reliably.
It is too early to understand the impact of closure of the London City route with its inter-connectivity through flights to other financial centres. We shall never know what business might now leave, or may in due course have come to Guernsey from those high-profile travellers who only half-filled the plane on that loss-making route with its connectivity to New York, Edinburgh, Luxembourg, Frankfurt and Zurich to name but a few. But did we assess the likely economic impact of that decision? Not an easy thing to do, but were the passengers and their businesses ever surveyed to determine their business connectivity before the decision was made?
Without an economic impact study, such as one major accounting firm here provided not long ago to assess the impact of Guernsey’s financial sector on the City of London, fatal decisions might be made by focus on the wrong metrics. Cost and level of subsidy must of course be a factor. But if the key metric is simply cheap tickets, it must be only a matter of time before Guernsey becomes a passing place en route between Jersey and London or Southampton, or possibly just a spoke to a growing air hub in Jersey. And if we deliver the virtual monopoly of air travel of this island into the sole hands of external operators, Guernsey may be on the flight path of descent in to irrelevance.
CHRIS RUSSELL,
1F, Tudor House,
Le Bordage,
St Peter Port, GY1 1DB.