Aurigny blames Flybe for its failure to launch Guernsey – Southampton flights
27.01.08
Aurigny has blamed its failure to provide a direct Southampton Airport link from Guernsey on rival Flybe's decision to postpone its Manchester service from the channel islands airport. However, a Flybe spokesman dismissed this as ‘ridiculous’.
The airline operates two daily services to Manchester and had planned to reduce this to one when 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 managing director, has said that Flybe’s failure to provide year-round competition on the route disrupted Aurigny’s plans.
Mr Hart said: ‘Aurigny is licensed to operate a Guernsey - Southampton service. This is a route that the airline applied for when extra competition was expected on our Manchester route. We had anticipated daily year-round competition from Flybe, which would have resulted in us reducing 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 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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