Little more than 10 days ago, this newspaper looked at the way Treasury and Resources and Blue Islands had cooked up a no-cost (other than to the taxpayer) way of getting rid of Aurigny Air Services and dubbed it a ‘kiss and sell’ deal.

With no evidence that it was in islanders’ or taxpayers’ best interest and no evidence that a transparent process for selling the airline had been adopted, it looked shabby.

Now, on the day that T&R is due to be holding a question and answer session with deputies and Healthspan boss Derek Coates is to face his critics in Alderney, it appears that the deal has soured.

While there is no confirmation, the deputy Treasury minister’s comments were revealing in their total lack of certainty that anything was going to happen.

That is in marked contrast to the earlier media briefing with his boss and Mr Coates at which they were saying how it was going to go ahead and how Aurigny’s fleet of Trislanders was virtually destined for the knacker’s yard.

We will have to wait to see what emerges today but if Blue Islands has backed away and Aurigny is leading a cost-cutting survival exercise on behalf of both airlines, as claimed over the weekend, T&R is going to look rather foolish.

Perhaps worse than that, it is going to look inept. As custodian of the public purse it was proposing to get into bed with – and entrust the lifeline Gatwick slots to – someone now apparently less than convinced that he should go ahead with what we were all supposed to believe was the deal of the century.

Ten days does not look a long time in which a racing certainty in terms of being the right thing for islanders can suddenly crash and burn. If T&R cannot be trusted to do its homework, who on earth can?

And what of the 280 staff employed by Aurigny? Should they have been put through the trauma of likely takeover and job losses unless there was a realistic prospect of it going ahead?

There is much that is unsatisfactory about this and islanders deserve a full explanation of what led to the kiss and sell deal that wasn’t.