Blue Islands waters down flight-cuts threat

Thursday 26 July 2018

Blue Islands has backtracked from initial threats it would slash loss making flights across all its routes from this winter.

Following the States historic decision to move to Open Skies on all but the Guernsey to Alderney and Gatwick routes, Blue Islands issued a terse statement "apologising to the people of Guernsey" for having no choice but to cut loss-making flights in the winter – resulting in higher ticket prices.

Now, though, it has issued a new statement watering-down the claims this was a definitive proposal. Instead, it now says that was a "worst case" scenario and not the implementation of the "plan B" flight-reduction it spoke of last week.

“Being no longer bound to operate a fixed minimum number of flights per day throughout the year, as stipulated by a formal route license, Blue Islands will naturally review the viability of selected off peak winter flights on certain days which may have historically operated with only a handful of passengers on a loss-making basis.

“For example, a certain flight on a certain Tuesday afternoon in November could be removed or consolidated to optimise the flying programme to reflect the ebb and flow of true passenger demand. Such marginal fluctuations between different days in a month and the wider seasonality of the route is common practice industry wide. As is the case in Jersey where EasyJet provides between one and four services per day on its Jersey – Gatwick service depending on the day of week and month to meet demand at that time.

“The risk of an open skies approach, which Blue Islands has warned of, is that seasonal cherry picking during high demand summer months undermines the year-round viability of existing high frequency services that islanders rely on. Should this risk materialise, changes to the frequency of service provision may well occur,” a spokesman said.

The airline currently flies year round to Jersey and Southampton, along with seasonal services to Cardiff for the last two summers. Founder Derek Coates has so far invested £45m. into the airline. Before the Open Skies debate Mr Coates released a long letter outlining his staunch opposition to the idea of Open Skies. But, despite the threats of pairing back route frequency, the airline now says it won’t rule out actually entering into competition.

“As a local airline, Blue Islands’ primary objective has and always will be to serve the Channel Islands communities as best it can, offering lifeline air links at sustainable levels and fares. Blue Islands will watch with interest which other operators want to offer services and routes to and from Guernsey as a result of open skies and will actively compete on routes where it sees both a need for Islanders and a commercial case to do so.”

This statement marks a significant volte-face from the angry reaction Mr Coates gave shortly after the States announced no Blue Islands route was now safe from competition. 

“The regrettable unintended consequence of this decision is, as we advised, to change our business strategy and model. Therefore, because we are now no longer bound by licence obligations to operate some half empty winter flights, we will implement our Plan B, which we prepared in the face of this possible challenge arising.  It is with deep regret as an island airline, that part of this refocus will inevitably be the removal of all of the non-profitable off-peak flights in the winter months, that used to lose us money.  Passengers will in future have no alternative but to pay higher fares on the available seats that remain unsold on our revised winter schedule to help fill the empty seats on our aircraft. We will now be able to use the resulting aircraft availability to focus on the more profitable routes of our network, thereby maintaining our own business viability,” Mr Coates said just last week, before the airline yesterday released a more conciliatory statement.