Guernsey householders receive a written apology from Aurigny

Tuesday, 4 June 2024 12:05

A glossy flyer has been posted through islanders' letterboxes, explaining the airline's plans to end months of delays and cancellations.

2024 has been a bad year so far for Aurigny.

Its plan to put its relatively new ATR fleet into maintenance - both planned and then separately under a directive from the manufacturer - has seen it struggling to lease in aircraft cover.

Then, one of its leased aircraft overshot the airport runway on 23 April and was taken out of service.

This, coupled with a global shortage of spares and long delivery times has meant there are too few aircraft to fly the schedule, especially when that got busier for the summer.

The flyer that has been delivered to island homes this week begins with an apology from CEO Nico Bezuidenhout and a promise to remedy the situation before the school holidays in July.

Aurigny plans to add a leased ATR to its fleet early that month and another in September, meaning it will have five of the 72 seater aircraft.

The leaflet then explains which routes will be amalgamated in a five week, slimmed down summer schedule that matches available aircraft to routes.

Aurigny promises customers that any delay beyond three hours will entitle them to change their flight for free, or get a refund and it will reimburse reasonable travel costs incurred in getting to a planned destination.