This Is Guernsey

By Joel de Woolfson

AURIGNY has blamed its failure to provide a direct Southampton link on Flybe postponing its Manchester service. The local airline operates two daily services to Manchester and had planned to reduce this to one when Flybe obtained a licence for the route.

This would have freed up a plane to start the Guernsey-Soton link.

Flybe recently announced that it would cancel its planned Manchester service between January and mid-March and Malcolm Hart, Aurigny managing director, claimed Flybe’s failure to provide year-round competition on the route disrupted Aurigny’s plans.

However, a Flybe spokesman dismissed this as ‘ridiculous’.

Mr Hart said: ‘Aurigny is licensed to operate a Guernsey-Southampton service.

‘This is a route that the airline applied for when extra competition was expected on our Manchester route.

‘We had anticipated daily year-round competition from Flybe, which could have resulted in us reducing our own double daily services to a single daily service.

‘This would have created the opportunity for us to operate the Southampton route on a daily basis.’

Mr Hart said his airline had cancelled its Tuesday and Thursday morning services during the winter months after Flybe got the route.

‘Had we known earlier than the first week of January this year that Flybe did not intend to provide Manchester services at all between January and mid-March, we would have maintained double daily services in those months as well,’ he said.

‘Unfortunately, it is not economically viable to reinstate these services at this late notice.

‘It is therefore fair to say that not only has Flybe’s half-hearted effort to

provide services to Manchester compromised Aurigny’s business, it has also resulted in a reduced service being offered to

customers.’

Mr Hart said flying direct to Southampton was no longer commercially viable for Aurigny because it had been further compromised by Blue Islands’ new service on the route.

‘We believe that in flying to Southampton via Alderney we can still give our customers a sustainable and realistic service that offers value to the people of Guernsey and Alderney.’

Flybe head of PR Niall Duffy said the logic behind Aurigny’s inability to run the route was not credible.

‘Despite Aurigny already receiving a whopping States subsidy, Flybe welcomes competition on all our routes,’ he said.

‘The 120,000 people we carried to and from Southampton are testament to the benefit of the Flybe model for Guernsey.’