Minister to meet airline boss over cancellations and delays

Thursday 04 August 2016

Blue Islands boss Rob Veron is on a ‘flying visit’ to Jersey today for a meeting with Senator Lyndon Farnham, the minister with responsibility for Economic Development and Tourism.

Senator Farnham demanded the meeting more than week ago after being bombarded by complaints from angry fliers, livid over the high number of cancellations or delays on inter-Island flights, and poor customer service.

In the last week, the early departure to Guernsey which is essential to the business community, has been either cancelled or delayed on most mornings. The inter-island services are operated by Blue Islands, but tickets are booked with Flybe. 

The Senator’s insistence on finding out what was causing the problems, and the public outcry, led the airline to publish a press statement last week saying it was a mixture of bad weather, problems leasing a plane, and technical issues.

The airline promised though to put it right as soon as possible, and said they were "aligned" with passengers – but weather problems have delayed flights once again the week. 

Senator Farnham hopes that by meeting the airline’s boss he can find out more about the problems and might be able to help. “At the moment”, he says “it’s difficult to know if there is anything we can do to sort things out. Perhaps by talking we can find some solutions. It’s in everyone’s best interests to make this work.”

Business leaders in particular want the problem sorted. Chairman of Jersey’s Chamber of Commerce’s Transport and Tourism sub-Committee, Andy Jehan, says: “Our members are frustrated with the unreliable inter-island service the operator is providing, many of whom have commented that it is cheaper to fly to the UK than a short 15-minute flight to Guernsey.” The Chamber says the airline should sort out its problems or let another company run the route.

But, it's difficult to know what control Senator Farnham has over the route, given that the Island has an 'open-skies' policy, and there is no service level agreement in place on which to hold airlines to account. On that basis, it's not yet clear how it could be put out to tender. 

Despite several requests Mr Veron has so far been unavailable to be interviewed.