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Stunned Guern

However, prospective buyer Derek Coates vehemently disagreed with the solicitor’s arguments, saying that all such points had been considered and the top lawyers in Guernsey were satisfied that the golden share was ‘watertight’

Firstly, the prospective buyer would not in his right mind publically state that such an agreement was anything but ‘watertight’.

Secondly whilst I don’t wish to belittle the legal minds within the island, an industry specialist in aviation law has provided an opinion which surley supercedes any local view.

IMO Aurigny must be kept under States ownership but in whatever guise necessary to ensure that it is not loss making and therefore not a burden on the taxpayer

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3

Stephen John

Stunned Guern

Like you I would rely on the opinion of John Balfour over the Guernsey lawyers.

The determination of some in T and R to give away the slots and Aurigny for a pittance must be of great concern to the taxpayers of Guernsey.

Hopefully enough deputies will see through the stupidity of this plan.

The warning is clear. If Coates and his business gets the slots then they are at risk.

I suggest this is a risk too much.

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5

hugo

lest it be forgotten – the debacle of Guernsey losing it’s Heathrow slots and the concomittant damage done to the Island industries because of this (and this damage was considerable) came about as follows
KLM Cityflyer “bought” Air UK and a couple of other regional airlines. They, as all these airlines still do, publicly stated that they valued the links to and from Heathrow although even then KLM Cityhopper did not operate to Heathrow, it was mainline KLM. These regional airlined were obtained to increase interline traffic via Amsterdam – and there were not many of these interline passengers wanting to go Guernsey – Heathrow – Amsterdam and onwards when Heathrow had even better interline connections worldwide – so despite all the protestations of support for Guernsey – KLM Cityhopper promply sold the Heathrow slots for several million pounds and we lost out. Even the KLM Cityhopper MD agreed that if he had lived in Guernsey he would have been as annoyed as anyone else – it was business but not really ethical. So these slots were lost forever – the route wasn’t busy enough to justify BA (which had originally owned them and transferred them to Air UK on their (BA) pulling out of Guernsey in 1980) operating to here from Heathrow and as ever we had no support from Jersey – who of course at the time still had their links and I have no doubt were happy to take advantage of the better airlinks that we had lost.

Since then we have had to rely on the Gatwick route which probably was oversubscribed with servioes by both BA and FlyBe – and as was so well reported yesterday – when BA pulled out of that route Aurigny, who were ground handling BA service in Guernsey obtained these remaining and vital slots to London – and make no mistake these Gatwick slots are vital.

The States made one of their wiser decisions in buying Aurigny to protect these slots despite the vehement attacks from both FlyBe (remember a UK based but originally Jersey company (Jersey European JEA) anybody remember!) and certain Islanders who did not want the States to own an airline and “anyway there was no shortage of slots at Gatwick etc etc)

With the total lack of support and interest in Guernsey routes from Jersey (hardly surprising I suppose looking at their past track record) we needed control of at least one airline to protect our lifeline routes, which we now have.

Despite the best efforts of that waste of Oxygen, Employment and Commerce and their political leadership who have already terminally damaged the inter island routes with their infantile “competition at any cost mantras” the Gatwick routes remain protected by our ownership of Aurigny – we DO NOT own the slots into Gatwick – Aurigny have the right to operate them as long as they use 80% of the slots overall – Use ‘em or lose ‘em applies here. The Airline Operators Committee in the UK allocate these to Airlines NOT political entities like the States – so there is no guarantee or golden share despite what some (who should know better if they had done a modicum of research in the right quarters – not Court Row)

This attempted fire sale of the Island’s assets is, I would submit, an absolute disgrace and I would seriously ask the “Politicians” who support this to consider their positions as this shows that they are completely out of their depth.

Here I am making a guesstimate, but if the Pairs of Gatwick slots are valued at £5 million a pop – 5 x 5m is 25Million so we sell Coates an asset for a quid and a nebulous “golden” share and get what in return? Shades of Guernsey Telecom and the give away to CW!

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7

I. Le Page

John Langlois is a top Guernsey lawyer and it was he who was involved in putting Aurigny in States hands,he also warns against selling Aurigny.He also consulted top aviation lawyers who also said to keep it in States hands.Those who ignore the past are condemned to repeat it!

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9

CD

I think John Balfour has a point. If we lost those slots it wouldn’t matter what legal action was taken against Derek Coates, or anyone else for that matter – the fact is we would not be able to get them back again.

Try to imagine Guernsey without a London air link – disastrous for our economy and for Islanders generally – we really cannot afford to get this wrong.

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11

Bob

No details of the proposed agreement have been made public, so how on earth would anyone have any idea what they were talking about? I think people should simply wait and see for ALL the details to be made public before anyone could even consider commenting.

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