Aurigny has posted an operating loss of £6.5million for 2024 despite carrying record numbers of passengers and making £60m from air fares alone.
The States of Guernsey owned airline suffered from a number of ‘black swan events’ during the first half of 2024 – leading to countless cancellations and delays.
That cost the airline money in refunds, additional expenses for stranded passengers, and fees for keeping Guernsey Airport open late as well as the ‘wet leases’ it negotiated to try and keep its services flying.
“A wet lease is a leasing arrangement whereby one airline provides an aircraft, complete crew, maintenance, and insurance to another airline or other type of business acting as a broker of air travel, which pays by hours operated”
The States of Guernsey’s 2024 Accounts show that Aurigny had actually seen revenue growth of 5% year-on-year compared to 2023 when it had made a £1.7m profit.
The airline has highlighted its “record passenger numbers” as a reason for its revenue growth.
It says passenger numbers reached “a historic high of 570,000” in 2024 – a 3% increase compared to the previous year.
With so many people flying, that meant Aurigny took a record amount of money in air fares from passengers, with turnover exceeding £60m.
The airline says there was a real-term reduction in fares for passengers though with prices increasing by 2%, approximately 3% below Guernsey inflation rate.
However, despite more people flying and the airline making more money, it also spent considerably more than it had done the previous year.
Its non-pay expenditure was £50.5m in 2024, up from £38.1m in 2023. That doesn’t include staff salaries which remained fairly static across the two years.
Aurigny itself has acknowledged the States Accounts publicly and has said the reason for the £6.5m loss “was driven by extraordinary wet lease (ACMI) costs, stemming from well-documented aircraft availability challenges and global supply chain issues, which affected both Aurigny and the wider industry”.
The airline maintains it was right to sell the Embraer Jet though, saying doing so saved it £10m of maintenance costs.
It is also looking to the future with optimism, saying that its use of wet leases is down by 80% year on year, and its on-time performance rate is improving again.
It’s also reporting increased bookings on some inbound services such as the Paris flights.
“The short-term pressures we faced in 2024, particularly the need for significant wet leasing, are easing, and the decisions made last year – including fleet simplification – will help secure longer-term financial stability,” said Roger Pratt, Chief Financial Officer.
“Whilst this was a challenging year that in many ways both Aurigny and its passengers will wish to put behind them, we connected more people than ever before, supported the island’s visitor economy, and protected essential lifeline routes. Aurigny will always be deeply committed to serving our community with care, pride and purpose, at the best value possible.”
