More air routes?

Tuesday 10 June 2014

Islanders could be able to fly to even more destinations directly if the States agree to turn the Ports of Jersey into a States-owned company, according to CEO Doug Bannister.

The Airport has just announced that the first five months of the year saw 16,000 more passengers flying into Jersey than last year – a 3% increase.

You can fly to 48 destinations from Jersey Airport this summer, but Mr Bannister says that if give the go-ahead for the move from treating the harbour and Airport as a States department to a private company, then that number will take off.

He said: “Our ability to do deals and to engage with airlines just makes it a lot easier.

“There are certain tools we have now – we give airlines a break on landing fees for the first three years, and Economic Development have in the past paid money to support the Heathrow route, for example.

“Route development is something that we are pretty good at, but I see opportunity in Scandinavia for us in particular, but I also see maybe eastern Europe and down into the Adriatic. Certainly Scandinavia represents an opportunity.

“At the moment, we cannot do equity joint ventures. We can go grants and loans, but not shared equity. If we went to SAS and said ‘We want to do Stockholm to Jersey and we believe that there is a good market for it’ we could propose to go halves on it and do a joint venture.”

Last year the Airport handled 1.42 million passengers.