guern123, last heard officially from Aurigny (a while back) was that the two/three Dorniers would come online in Q4 2014 and the Trislanders would retire roughly simultaneously, give and take a bit of overlap. But with an LCY application suggesting they'll arrive in May, we'd probably best expect them somewhat earlier. LCY strategy is intriguing. Even with a E195 in service as of March (and the owned aircraft by June), there will be slightly fewer seats between on LGW-GCI each day. Certainly a May start date seems very early and I'm not sure what the rush is - but you can't expect the airline to try to grow the London market if it has no spare capacity. This might be their argument; either way I suspect a D228 service will be hideously expensive to run.
Having an ATR back-up seems sensible. There was talk of 'DB being returned to the lessor at the end of summer 2013 although it was decided to extend the lease - not sure how long for. It might be refitted, or GR might just consider that a spare aircraft (perhaps to increase STN to 2x daily as it used to be, perhaps something else or simply to increase ad hoc capacity to what it was pre-2009 when JER-STN and GCI-EMA were restarted) would be a sensible addition.
Hope than answers some questions. In terms of worrying about cash, you're entitled to. But bear in mind that the Trislanders are costing £500ph to run and the Dornier will be substantially (around 40%) cheaper, so the refleeting is an investment rather than an extravagance. Similarly if it weren't for the jet there would be serious underserving of the Gatwick route.
wakeup, not sure I agree. We don't need to be theoretical about how Easyjet might have served Guernsey. Isle of Man is bemoaning its adoption of an open-skies policy and demise of Euromanx on Tynwald's watch for the simple reason that this will be the first for many years where it will be impossible to travel IOM-LON at all between Saturday lunchtime and Sunday evening. BA LCY service subsidised by a local gaming company. Easyjet at its own whims depending on growth of its operation and slot values at LGW. Worth remembering that Al Brouard's Air Transport Licensing Board at Commerce & Employment was independently minded enough to grant Flybe LTN-GCI, despite BE now not wanting to operate after December cuts. So probably a worse time than ever now for Guernsey to adopt open-skies policy.