During last year – Aurigny’s ‘annus horribilis’ – a leading local business group organised a seminar on Guernsey’s air links. It was a packed event. One of the speakers was Louise Congdon, the hugely experienced head of consultancy firm York Aviation. She was asked for her opinion of Aurigny. Her answer was really quite bold given the circumstances prevailing at the time.
She opined that Guernsey was very lucky to have Aurigny. That we had better air connectivity than most communities of our size could even dream of. That we would be crazy to do anything which undermined Aurigny’s business model, and should instead focus on fixing the resilience issues it was experiencing at the time.
Meanwhile another set of consultants, Frontier Economics, who had been employed by the Economic Development Committee, concluded that, outside of 2024, Guernsey’s air links compared favourably with both Jersey and the Isle of Man in terms of both reliability and connectivity.
Until recently my role as the president of the STSB involved holding Aurigny to account for fulfilling the strategic objectives they’d been given by the States. In that role I felt constrained over what I said by the need to be scrupulously fair.
I ought to, and did, strongly criticise Aurigny, on behalf of the Guernsey public, for the major failure of resilience they suffered for a number of months during 2024. At the same time I had to keep my criticism objective and evidence-based. It would have been quite wrong as the shareholder representative to go into rant mode – even when I was personally impacted by delays or cancellations.
I am no longer constrained by any such niceties. I can now say exactly what I want to say. So I will.
I think Louise Congdon was spot on. Guernsey is indeed incredibly lucky to have an airline like Aurigny, whose very raison d’etre is to service Guernsey and provide the best connectivity it possibly can. Who will never just drop routes that are important for the island if they see greater profits to be made elsewhere. Who understand that islanders need a comprehensive service, year round, even if the pickings are pretty lean during the winter months.
Yes, what happened during 2024 was completely unacceptable, even if it was caused by a series of unfortunate and unforeseeable events. We must ensure that such disruption never happens again. But for heaven’s sake let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I am therefore quite worried to hear some of those elected to influential positions in the new States talking glibly of changing Guernsey’s whole air connectivity policy. My message to them is: ‘For heaven’s sake be careful what you wish for’.
In this context I think it is important to attempt to bust a few myths. I know that a reputation is hard to rebuild once tarnished, but those saying that 2025 is proving as disruptive as 2024 are talking complete moonshine. Here are some facts.
l In the first six months of this year Aurigny completed 97.5% of its flights to/from the UK. That compares to a UK industry average of 93.5% as reported by Eurocontrol.
l A cancellation rate of 2.5% is not only far better than the industry average of 6.5% but this figure includes cancellation due to adverse weather and restrictions imposed by air traffic control. Both of these are real issues for an airline based in the English Channel and servicing Gatwick.
l In the first six months of this year 22.9% of Aurigny flights were delayed by 15 minutes or more – almost exactly the same as the industry average. But adjusted for weather disruption and ATC restrictions this falls to 16%. Far better than the industry average, but I am the first to say that it needs to improve further. There is every indication that this is happening.
l In the first six months of this year Aurigny’s passenger numbers were 1.1% up on 2024, which in itself was a record year for passenger numbers, as was 2023. This is a single airline’s passenger numbers, rather than those for Guernsey airport, but it is interested to note that the trend is better than in either Jersey or the Isle of Man. Totally contrary to the narrative being peddled by some.
l Far from wet-leasing aircraft at the same level as 2024, as some keyboard warriors have suggested, Aurigny spent 60% less on wet-leasing in the first half of this year than the same period in 2024. Airport opening extension requests past 9.30pm were also well down.
l Far from always being a bad thing, a controlled degree of wet-leasing makes perfect sense, providing greater resilience more cost effectively than scaling up the fleet and leaving a big chunk of it unused for much of the time. Statistics from this time last year showed that about 200 aircraft were being used on wet-lease contracts by carriers across Europe such as Lufthansa and Air France.
l Another big difference is that in 2025 nearly all of the wet leasing has been from two trusted partner airlines.
l Claims that the airline will lose as much money in 2025 as it did in 2024 (£6.5m.) are completely wide of the mark. This year is heading to being much, much better. All of the signs are that within a year or so Aurigny will return to the positive financial results which they produced in 2022 and 2023.
l Far from spiralling out of control Aurigny’s fares have gone up by less than inflation over recent years. This was backed up by Economic Development’s report from Frontier Economics. This showed that the fare difference between Guernsey and Jersey on London flights had narrowed, while Guernsey was actually cheaper on many regional services.
l Suggestions that ATRs are particularly fragile aircraft are simply wrong. They are no more prone to technical issues than other aircraft. They are actually the perfect choice for the sort of short haul flights we typically see from Guernsey, which is why they are also heavily used by other regional operators such as Loganair, Eastern and Emerald.
I know none of this will come as any consolation to anybody whose travel plans have been disrupted but proper perspective is needed.
Now on to a couple of other urban myths – which completely contradict each other.
The first is the idea that Aurigny would thrive if it only served the so called ‘lifeline routes’ and gave up all of the rest. Firstly studies have made clear that this would be a far less efficient businesses model and make them less financially self-sufficient. Secondly it would leave Guernsey with far worse air connectivity. The idea that other airlines would be queuing up to service all of the regional routes is risible.
As for the criticism by some of Aurigny’s summer directs to a range of European cities? These tend to be on Saturdays when there are fewer UK flights and are a sensible use of the airlines capacity. Anyway, I know they are hugely enjoyed by locals who love going to the sun but by-passing that Gatwick lay-over. It would therefore be a crying shame to discontinue them. Yes if it made a difference to resilience on the lifeline routes, but it doesn’t.
The contrary theory is that Aurigny should give up the London routes, to make room for a bigger airline, and should instead concentrate instead purely on the regional market. This makes even less sense. There’s no way Aurigny could survive under that model and meantime there would/could be no guarantee that Guernsey would retain its crucial slots at a hub London airport. It is only by owning an airline which operates those slots that we get that 100% guarantee. No sub-contracting or ‘babysitting’ arrangement can do so. That is why we bought Aurigny in the first place.
More recently there has been talk of subsidising a big airline to operate the Guernsey-Heathrow route but that would be an absolutely massive act of self-harm.
Let’s be clear – Guernsey-Heathrow is subject to the States’ open skies policy and there is absolutely nothing to stop any airline operating it tomorrow if they want to use precious Heathrow slots for the purpose. No licence would be required from the TLA, despite ‘London’ really being one market for Guernsey aviation.
So there is no closed shop or protection for Aurigny on the London market. But for the Guernsey taxpayer to actually subsidise another airline to compete head on with one they own themselves would be the very definition of folly. The taxpayer would be paying twice.
Firstly they would be paying the sweetener needed to induce a slot holding airline to operate the route – which is likely to be quite big. Secondly they would be stumping up to cover the large losses such a policy would obviously inflict on their own airline. A bit like the owners of Waitrose offering big financial incentives for their customers to shop at M&S instead.
More importantly the only way Aurigny could try to limit their resulting losses would be to reduce capacity on the Gatwick route and in the process relinquish some of their precious slots. That would negate the very reason the States bought it. Even worse, unless the subsidised Heathrow service could somehow be guaranteed forever (hard to see how), it would put Guernsey’s longer term connectivity with the UK capital in doubt.
So my message to my successors is simple – tread very carefully indeed.
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