Aurigny’s role needs to be clarified, according to the politician in charge of the airline – who has warned that BA’s new Heathrow route will cost the States-owned operator millions of pounds this year alone.
The President of the States Trading and Supervisory Board yesterday told his colleagues that Aurigny’s losses are likely to be around £5 million for 2026.
Deputy Helyar said the situation will worsen now the airline’s monopoly on flights to London has been broken by the States’-subsidised service to Heathrow.
“The new daily Heathrow service is clearly positive for connectivity” he said, adding that the “additional capacity into London” will have an impact on “Aurigny’s London services, and may have knock-on effects for other routes such as Southampton”.
He warned that this “will generate financial losses”.
The President of STSB pushed deputies to truly define what role the States owned airline has to play going forward.
“The key point from a STSB perspective is that Aurigny’s role must be defined clearly and explicitly,” Deputy Helyar said.
“Is Aurigny to be treated and funded primarily as a commercial airline, and expected to compete freely and to earn a commercial return on capital? Or is it to be treated as a strategic asset tasked with guaranteeing specific lifeline routes and minimum service levels with a corresponding level of subsidy or support?”
He emphasised the need for Aurigny’s main objective to be set in concrete, and warned that it could spell disaster if avoided.
“There is room for a position between those extremes, the government needs to make a decision, and it needs to be spelled out.
“Without that clarity, no board and no management team can sensibly optimise the business, and the island will continue to see periodic shocks when commercial realities collide with implicit political expectations and the cost of the public purse.”
According to Deputy Helyar, not only is there an urgent need to set concrete objectives, but there’s a greater financial impact from new competition against Aurigny, with the STSB President referencing the Heathrow routes “cannibalisation of passengers”.
Deputy Helyar said the airline could end this year on a loss of £5m, due to a potential drop in bookings of 15%.
Responding to questions he said “there’s an evolving picture in terms of the way in which the business will need to respond to competition and cannibalisation of passengers on the Heathrow route.
“The latest figures that we have available for the business show that it’s likely the forward bookings to the end of October are down by 15%. The business is likely to reach the end of this year with a 5 million pound loss.”
The STSB President further clarified that decrease includes the increase in bookings the airline has experienced on the Southampton and Jersey routes, following the collapse of Blue Islands in November last year.
“It’s only an estimate because that’s based on forward bookings,” he said. “It may be in three months a 15% reduction in comparison to the previous quarter, where there is actually significant increase on previous years.
“So it’s very difficult to say at this stage, but that is a net position, even taking into account the additional transport of passengers to Southampton and Jersey. So it’s a net position after the gain of those new routes.”