They say a week is a long time in politics, but it is clearly a lifetime in local aviation. Just three days ago we had a single local airline maintaining critical routes between Jersey and Guernsey, and to Southampton in particular. Rumours had been circulating about the future of Blue Islands for some time, given the obvious operational difficulties which had plagued passengers in recent months.
And then it was gone…to be replaced within hours on various routes by Loganair and Aurigny.
Given the serious shockwaves created by Blue Islands collapse on Friday night, most notably to its staff, questions were rife about who knew what, and when, and how much public money had been lost?
To be fair, the government has moved very quickly to answer many of those questions, confirming that Blue Islands is going into liquidation owing a little over £9m to the island; that Loganair is being supported with £1.5m to enable it begin services within a couple of days; and that the support was provided to Blue Islands over the last twelve months to help it in its ultimately unsuccessful bid to find a buyer.
In the end, it’s now been confirmed that the government rejected the option to buy it, or to provide still more money – and so it collapsed.
As many have noted, and events have demonstrated, regional aviation is a highly precarious business; and it is to the credit of all concerned that the island’s essential routes are still operating today, given the extraordinary level of disruption over the last few days.
The future is less clear, something best illustrated by the Jersey/Guernsey route in particular. As of this week, there is competition on the route for the first time in many years; that competition is provided by Aurigny, owned by the States of Guernsey, and Loganair, part-supported at least in the short-term, by taxpayers in Jersey. Guernsey has also given notice that it now intends to licence the route from January, so that it has more control over service levels.
Clearly, the immediate priority has rightly been to keep key routes operating, and therefore enable Islanders to continue to travel.
Now that has been achieved, the bigger strategic questions come to the fore: what is the right model for the ‘hyper-local’ routes such as between the islands; how do we best deliver frequency, and reasonable fares; should the government provide support? The collapse of Blue Islands raises questions more quickly than it answers them.
