Inter-island air travel numbers collapse by 41% in five years

Friday 27 September 2024

Passenger movements between Guernsey and Jersey have slumped since 2019.

An examination of data for each year up to August from 2019 through to 2024 by air and by sea shows that total numbers fell from 138,974 to 95,799, a decrease of 31%, with signs of a slowing recovery.

In 2019 there were 73,957 airport passenger movements by August, compared to just 43,546 this year, a fall of 41%.

Harbour figures also show a decline in that timeframe, falling from 65,017 to 52,253, or 19.6% down.

Competition was fierce on inter-island air travel in 2019 as Aurigny had relaunched its service to Jersey, while Blue Islands and FlyBe also competed on the route.

Aurigny pulled out in February 2020, saying that while prices had reduced and services improved, passenger numbers had not lifted as they had hoped.

Travel was then decimated by restrictions introduced around the Covid pandemic.

Pictured: The trend in Guernsey/Jersey total passenger numbers as of August each year.

This year is the first time in the 2019 to 2024 period when more people have travelled by sea than by air.

In August, there was an 83% increase in Jersey ferry passengers when this year is compared to 2023..

“While it should be noted that air passengers from Jersey decreased by 29% (2,001 people) in August, an additional 5,157 people travelled from Jersey by sea, which demonstrates a continued shift by Jersey passengers from air to sea, but more importantly, an increase in Jersey visitors generally,” Visit Guernsey said in a summary report of the August statistics.

Travel was one of the areas addressed during Wednesday morning’s States sitting.

Economic Development President Neil Inder touched on the opportunities on inter-island services.

“We talk about everyone being able to go to Australia, New Zealand, or 500 destinations in England, but actually, there's something missing in all this,” said Deputy Inder.

“There're conversations I’m having with Jersey. There is an opportunity to look at that internal churn of money around the islands.”

The travel figures released publicly do not differentiate between business and recreational travel.

A Critical Economics report released earlier this year which was investigating a CI vision, said that there had been numerous businesses, particularly UK corporate organisations, which had seen the merit in operating seamlessly across both Jersey and Guernsey.

But how business operates is changing.

“One resultant trend over the past few years has been the preference for new business to favour Jersey as the CI hub.”

Since the pandemic business have also embraced communicating online through services like Teams and Zoom, cutting the need to travel.