Aurigny blames Flybe for its failure to launch Guernsey flights
27.01.08
Channel Island's airline Aurigny has blamed its failure to launch a direct Southampton Airport link from Guernsey on rival Flybe's decision to postpone its Manchester service from the island. A Flybe spokesman dismissed this suggestion as ‘ridiculous’.
Aurigny operates two daily flights between Guernsey and Manchester, but it had planned to reduce this to one after Flybe obtained a licence for the route. This would have freed up a plane to start the Guernsey - Southampton link.
However, Flybe recently announced that it would not operate its Guernsey - Manchester service between January and mid-March and Malcolm Hart, Aurigny's managing director, said that Flybe’s failure to provide year-round competition on the route disrupted Aurigny’s plans.
Mr Hart said: ‘We are licensed to operate a Guernsey - Southampton service. We applied for this route when extra competition was expected from Flybe on our Manchester route. We anticipated daily year-round competition from Flybe, which would have seem us reduce our own double daily services to a single daily service. This would have created the opportunity for us to operate the Southampton route on a daily basis.’
However, Flybe head of PR, Niall Duffy, said the logic behind Aurigny’s inability to run the route was not credible. He said: ‘Despite Aurigny already receiving a whopping States [local government] subsidy, Flybe welcomes competition on all our routes. The 120,000 people we carried to and from Southampton are testament to the benefit of the Flybe model for Guernsey.’
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