Why not reschedule to avoid delays on Manchester flights?

The excuse each time has been ‘late arrival from the previous flight’.

On the two return journeys from Manchester, to add insult to injury, upon boarding the aircraft, we have then had to wait for refuelling, which yesterday [8 July] the 30-minute wait on board in sweltering heat was quite unbearable.

When staff are challenged concerning the delays, the earlier rotation from Stansted is blamed, and yesterday evening we were advised it was due to staff shortages of the ground crew there. We were further told ‘it affects us too you know, every day this week we have been late home, but there is nothing that can be done about it and it's going to be the same all summer’.

Well, that quite frankly sums up Aurigny’s appalling customer services. God help you if you have a bag 1cm too long/wide, but on four occasions in one week when they are between 40 minutes and 1 hour 55 minutes late, to the detriment of the passengers who they have a contract with, it’s tough – ‘there is nothing we can do and, oh yes, us poor crew are affected too’.

Perhaps I live in a bygone age, when customer service meant something and you did everything possible to operate to time.

I don’t work in the airline industry, but I would have thought the remedy is simple: either reschedule the Stansted flight or the Guernsey one.

NICK SAUL.

Editor’s footnote: An Aurigny spokesman replies:

Thanks for giving us the opportunity to reply to this letter.

Firstly, we would like to apologise for the disruption your correspondent experienced on these occasions and we can assure him, and all your readers, that we are working hard, with partner handling agents and the airports, to reduce delays wherever possible.

So far, for the year to date, a total of 76% of flights have departed on time (within 15 minutes) from Manchester. This compares to 80% network-wide.

During the peak summer period, when airports are at their busiest and most congested, we do find that handling agents can be particularly stretched.

Added to this pressure, our handling agent for many years at Stansted recently closed its operations at the airport and ended our contract at very short notice. We, and other airlines, had to find alternative handlers within a matter of weeks and reached an agreement with another company. All parties knew this would be challenging, given the short notice and the current lack of resources in the Stansted area, but we are working together to keep delays and knock-on disruption to a minimum, where possible.

If we are running late, for whatever reason, our refueller will be working on their next allocated job when we arrive and we will unfortunately have to wait to be refuelled. This is universal practice and affects all carriers if they are operating off-schedule.

On these occasions, we generally board the flight before refuelling to minimise any further delay.

Conscious of the impact of delays, we continually monitor and scrutinise the performance and punctuality from each airport and look at how improvements can be made.

If we could make changes to the timetable to reduce disruption, this would be done.

However, sadly, we are unable to significantly reschedule services and still complete our published programme, as the opening hours of Guernsey restrict our ability to do so.

We’d just like to close by once again assuring your readers that our on-time performance is something we take very seriously and we are making concerted efforts, at all times, to improve.

We are confident the situation at Stansted will improve.

In addition, on days where we have spare crew available, we will endeavour to operate the Manchester flight on a separate (back-up) aircraft.