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Aurigny is already planning to cut some routes from its schedules next year having "gained some learnings" from the capacity and reliability problems experienced earlier this year.
The Liverpool and Newquay routes are among those that are unlikely to be flown next year.
While the Paris, Dublin, and other European seasonal routes, and London City are all likely to be ongoing additions to the schedules.
Aurigny's CEO, Nico Bezuidenhout explained why these decisions have been made during an exclusive one-on-one interview with Express.
Pictured: Nico Bezuidenhout speaking one-on-one with Express Senior Reporter Laura Clayton.
Aurigny has faced criticism this year for 'doing too much' including launching new routes, while it's failed to deliver on some of its key services.
The delays and cancellations experienced by thousands of people during the first half of this year has been attributed to three unforeseen technical events affecting two ATRs and the Embraer Jet.
February 2024 was the foggiest February on record too, while other weather related issues have affected flights throughout the year with wind related delays and cancellations as recently as Sunday night.
Mr Bezuidenhout has acknowledged these failures, which led to a decline in punctuality and reliability, and he accepts that some of the newly launched routes have not worked.
But some have worked.
"I think that there's been a number of successes, which we unfortunately, because of the magnitude of the challenges, we end up overlooking," he said.
"The reintroduction of London City has been successful. Passenger volumes, and load factors are pretty much on par with what we see in Gatwick. So we have affected a change in the way that we look at travel between Guernsey and London.
"Historically, when we looked at Guernsey to London, it's always been Gatwick and almost nothing else. Whereas today we've got 75% of our volumes go through Gatwick, 25% goes through London City, so that's been a great victory. We've increased the level of the frequency of connectivity between Guernsey and the City of London by 34% this year. We are, as a jurisdiction, one of the most well connected by frequency to the financial center that is London, and that's specifically important given the reliance on the financial services sector that we've got on this on this island."
Pictured: Aurigny's engineers monitor flights and use various methods to analyse detailed data, offering an early insight into any technical problems or other factors which may affect the aircraft or flight time.
Mr Bezuidenhout said the City service will continue next year because it offers a viable alternative to Gatwick for many passengers.
The Paris route is also set to continue into 2025, he said - describing the twice weekly service as "amazingly successful" so far.
"77% of our seats over summer was sold out in Paris. It means that you as a consumer can get from Guernsey to Paris in call it an hour and a half in total flight time, whereas if you were the same passenger sitting in Jersey, that would take you six hours and a connection via Gatwick before you could get to Paris.
"For as long as it's supported by the community, we will deliver the service," he confirmed, "and thus far, we've had support and an underwriting of the route by the Committee for Economic Development.
"We've not had to draw on that security essentially, and for as long as the route remains supported by the community, we will continue operating it.
"Similarly, our Dublin services have been effective at three frequencies a week during summer. We will try to get more slots for winter, but that has been successful," he added.
Mr Bezuidenhout believes Dublin can offer an alternative for some passengers flying through the UK and on to America.
A partnership with Aer Lingus is planned, which will enable passengers to travel through Ireland while clearing customs for the USA before they arrive at their final destination.
Pictured: Aurigny committed itself to flying new routes - including to Paris - months before technical problems affected its services. Mr Bezuidenhout said it has been a success and will continue for as long as it is supported.
He said the once weekly Edinburgh service has also worked "surprisingly well", and it will therefore continue.
"There's been others that didn't work," Mr Bezuidenhout acknowledged.
"Liverpool hasn't worked. There was method behind the madness when we needed additional capacity into Manchester. So for us, the option there was you either put it into Manchester, or you put it into Liverpool - it's a similar catchment area, but potentially not a full overlap. But that doesn't justify operating Liverpool. So we won't be operating Liverpool next year.
"Newquay was a short six week experiment. We had aircraft capacity available. We are unlikely to to do that, next year," he said.
"Again, there's been some good, good successes. It was just overwhelming ultimately, in terms of the level of disruptions that we have suffered this year.
"We've gained some learnings. We've improved some levels of communication. There's more to be done. And now, in the end, we'll get our reliability levels back to where it needs to be."
Pictured: Nico Bezuidenhout has been CEO of Aurigny since 2020.
With scheduled flights operating to various airports across the Channel Islands, UK, and Europe at various levels of frequency, it is inevitable that there will be delays and cancellations.
Island residents know and understand that - but how those delays and cancellations are managed, and communicated with passengers, led to Aurigny facing heavy criticism this year.
Ultimately decisions on cancelling flights will be made based on a number of factors - some of which may not be apparent to passengers at the time.
The decision may be made by Mr Bezuidenhout himself, or it may be made by other parties - such as Air Traffic Control in the island, or at a destination airport.
"...for example, (Friday) morning, our London City flight was an hour delayed, not due to anything else, but the fact that there was bad weather in London.
"They wouldn't allow us to take off, and we had to hold the aircraft for an hour before the weather cleared. And then that does have an effect. It does have a knock on effect. And of course, when you then get to seven o'clock at night as a passenger, I don't expect you to know that the reason why you're late is because of a flood this morning."
Mr Bezuidenhout said Aurigny has made a concerted effort to improve the way it communicates these matters to passengers this year.
Its website is one of the methods used.
"We've got a disruption page on our website where we refer you to, and there's two elements to that page.
"One is the qualitative narrative, ie telling you what has happened or why it's happened, and then a dynamic and real time flight tracker that allows you to see exactly what time your flight is currently estimated to depart. Of course, that will keep on changing, depending on what the specific challenge might or might not be, equally.
"Then we've done some further development that automates SMS and WhatsApp and email communication.
"The downside, of course, is now that whenever we change a flight, even if just by five minutes, you're going to get an email that tells you your flight has been changed by five minutes. But in the end, some people want to know it's going to be changed by five minutes, and others don't. So at this point, I'm almost adopting the approach of saying if you didn't want to know, then ignore the email. But there's somebody else who did want to know, and I've got no way of knowing which category you fall in. I had a contract with you, to say that I'm going to transport you at X time. Now, I'm changing the time and I'm going to tell you."
In our exclusive series of articles this week, Nico Bezuidenhout will explain why making a profit is only third on Aurigny's list of priorities.
He also shares his views on how Government ownership works here and elsewhere in the aviation sector.
Mr Bezuidenhout has praise for his staff too - some of whom are marking more than four decades working for 'Guernsey's airline'.
A podcast of the full interview will be published on Friday.
EXCLUSIVE: Aurigny's boss on regaining your trust
OPINION: He is the right man for the job
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