If travel companies continue to disrespect customers, people will be reluctant to return

Family holidays involve using Condor Ferries which is regularly unreliable, frustrating and costly.

My last two trips to the island, one in July and another recent one, were by air. I always choose to book with Blue Islands as their prices are more competitive than Aurigny, even though you are seated on the same aircraft as Aurigny passengers.

Both flights have been extremely disruptive and the lack of customer service, communication to the passenger, and general lack of thought and care for what their ‘operational decisions’ involve leave a lot to be desired. My flight in July was cancelled due to fog which is understandable, however, Blue Islands kept all the passengers in the terminal until 9.30pm, the aircraft finally landed in thick fog and only then were we told it would not be flying back to Southampton because they would not have a flight available in the morning for other passengers.

What kind of service is that? The airline knew it would not leave the island hours earlier but did not relay this to the passengers. We had been sitting there for five hours, then had to frantically re-book another flight and find accommodation late at night. There were elderly passengers travelling on their own looking lost and bewildered with no help or support from airline staff. It was really dreadful.

This happened again when I should have been flying home. My flight was cancelled very last minute due to ‘operational decisions’. I have written a very detailed complaint letter to Blue Islands but also wanted to let you know that the airline management seems to be oblivious to its customers and their needs and are only focused on the airline’s needs. Not a good advert for Guernsey I am afraid to say. The customers keep the airline operating and unless the service improves soon, your tourism may be affected. It is expensive to holiday in Guernsey – if the travel companies continue to disrespect the customers as they are doing now, people will be reluctant to return to the island.

I apologise if I have gone into too much detail but this service or lack of service needs to be highlighted and improvements need to be made quickly.

Angela Cooper

Editor’s note: A Blue Islands spokesman responds:

Thank you for the opportunity to reply to your correspondent’s letter.

We are sorry our customer experienced disruption when travelling with us, in both instances this was unfortunately caused by circumstances out of our control. There was a planned delay to the flight on 26 August as a result of an unscheduled maintenance requirement on one aircraft. This was further compounded when the aircraft due to operate the service, albeit with a delay, suffered a bird-strike on arrival into Guernsey. On inspection, a replacement propeller blade was required before the aircraft could operate again, this was sent to Guernsey, installed and the aircraft resumed service the following day. We understand the frustration of being at the airport for an extended duration, we can assure the correspondent the cancellation was absolutely the last resort. Fog in the Channel Islands can be unpredictable, this affected many flights on 26 July. Our team were agile and operated within the constraints of what the weather permitted, including launching flights to go in the holding pattern to take advantage of any improvements in visibility that could enable an aircraft to land.

Our team works tirelessly to minimise the impact of delays during disruption and endeavour to ensure customers are kept informed via email and SMS updates at the earliest opportunity. There are occasions when the operational plan is impacted by other subsequent events forcing adjustments to the operation; once again, cancellation is always the last resort, and we apologise for the inconvenience the disruption caused.