ISLAND CONNECTIVITY AND AURIGNY

Island Connectivity and Aurigny

Guernsey’s connectivity is crucial to islanders, and also to our ability to remain relevant in the business world. The Condor/Brittany Ferries agreement was not without its challenges, but the direct link to France has already boosted our tourism industry with increased visitor numbers. While it is still very early days it looks like the States made the right decision for our island, even though it was regrettable that we weren’t able to agree a joint package with Jersey.

But what about our air links? It was right for the States to nationalise Aurigny in 2003, after BA pulled out of the route thus putting the Island’s crucial Gatwick slot in jeopardy. But a long time has passed, and while I know the airline staff to be hard-working and dedicated, other issues out of their control have contrived to make the airline expensive and unreliable over the 20 years since the decision to take it under States control. This topic comes up again and again when I tell people of my intention to stand for Deputy, “the States need to sort Aurigny out!”.

Is the island simply too small to run a commercial airline? Is it time to perhaps look for a partner firm to service the various routes, one who benefits from the economies of scale of running a larger enterprise with more aircraft and maintenance facilities? This option certainly needs exploring.

Would a longer runway in Guernsey attract budget airlines, and would the cost of creating one make it worthwhile? It would seem after the findings of the York Aviation review were published that it might just be an expensive way to cause a whole new raft of issues and certainly should not be considered before we need to look at resurfacing the runway in 10 years’ time.

P&R said recently that losses announced for 2024 will be absorbed by the airline rather than covered by another payment from the States, which I welcome, but I suspect that the main way that Aurigny are going to be able to achieve this is through increasing their fares.

So how do we deal with the issues that are facing the island’s airline today? I don’t pretend to know the answers or at this point to have all the detailed facts to make an informed decision. But I do know that Islanders and business need reasonably-priced, reliable and regular links to the UK, and the current service is not providing this. If elected I would encourage there to be a full review of what’s required to support Aurigny, while also exploring alternative air link options available to the island, because a business making £8million losses a year is simply unsustainable.     

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