Blue Islands cancels another service

Friday 29 July 2016

It seems Jersey’s Economic Development Minister and Blue Islands’ boss will have a lot to discuss when they meet next week, as the airline's problems continued this morning.

Senator Lyndon Farnham has been demanding an urgent meeting with Rob Veron after being bombarded with complaints from angry passengers over the number of cancelled inter-Island flights.

That meeting’s now been confirmed; the two will get together on Thursday 4^th September. Blue Islands has put its problems down to a combination of bad weather, technical issues, and problems with leasing an aircraft.

It operates the Jersey/Guernsey flights, although tickets are sold through Flybe. 

The premier business flight, which normally leaves at 08:10 has been removed from the schedule for most of this week, but this morning passengers also found that the 09:40 had been cancelled.

One said he’d gone airside, only to be called back to the departures hall, and asked to give back the duty-free he had purchased. 

In a press release yesterday Blue Islands said its  “team [was] working tirelessly to resolve the current issues which will be rectified over the next few days, our published timetable will resume on Monday and we are taking measures to mitigate against the risk of future occurrences.”

Earlier this week Jersey’s Chamber of Commerce issued an ultimatum to Blue Islands demanding it either improve its service or let someone else operate the route.

Chairman of Chamber's Transport and Tourism sub-Committee, Andy Jehan, said: “A robust inter-island service is needed for the business, tourism and leisure industries, a service which has to be affordable. Our members are frustrated with the unreliable inter-island service the operator is providing, many of whom have commented that it is cheaper to fly to the UK than a short 15-minute flight to Guernsey.”