Airline boss apologises to passengers for “unprecedented disruption”

Tuesday 26 July 2016

The MD of Blue Islands has said sorry to customers for the “unprecedented” number of flights between Jersey and Guernsey that have either been cancelled or delayed over the past few months.

Another key Jersey / Guernsey flight was cancelled this morning, with the next flight facing a 40 minute delay, leading to angry comments from inter-island passengers on social media about the frequency of disruption in recent weeks.

Rob Veron blames a combination of fog, being let down by an aircraft lessor, and unforeseen technical issues, for causing the problems.

He says: “During the month of June the Channel Islands experienced 15 days of adverse weather, including some of the worst fog disruption in many years. This is exceptional when compared to June 2014 and June 2015 where 1 day and 6 days respectively were affected by weather. In total, 2016 (January – June) has already seen 40 days affected by weather, a significant increase from the same period in 2014 and 2015 which saw disruption on 29 and 32 days respectively.

"Whilst every effort is made to minimise the impact to our passengers, regrettably this does cause extensive operational disruption.”

Mr Veron then goes on to say: “Further adding to this weather disruption, we have regrettably been let down by an aircraft lessor who was due to deliver a further ATR aircraft to the Blue Islands fleet in May. Unfortunately this, together with unforeseen technical issues with other aircraft within the fleet, has further compounded the effect on our operational performance.

"We are now in the final stages of sourcing an alternative aircraft to ensure that we can best support our operation with our own Channel Island-based spare aircraft. We wish to assure all of our customers of our attention to these matters, as we focus on our service provision and commitment to our Jersey and Guernsey operations.”

The politician responsible for economic development and tourism says he’s been inundated with angry comments from Islanders alleging a poor level of service on inter-Island flights being operated Blue Islands, under the Flybe banner. 

Senator Lyndon Farnham says, “...the service is not good enough.” He’s trying to schedule a meeting with airline bosses to find out what the problems are, and what can be done: “I’d like it to be this week, or the next at the very latest.”

Senator Farnham says the problems seem to have come about following a “franchise partnership” between Flybe and Blue Islands in June. Under the set-up Blue Islands has its own crews and planes, but tickets are sold through Flybe. 

Latest figures show the number of passengers flying through Jersey Airport in the first six months of this year are 4.5% up on 2015, but perhaps most tellingly that inter-Island flights are down 10% over the same period.