The history of ACI-JER is fairly prosaic and its current dormancy to my knowledge has very little to do directly any desire on the part of the States of Guernsey for it not to operate. After it was relinquished by BUA, Aurigny operated the route from Jul 1968 until Oct 2004, carrying between around 10-20,000 passengers pa (numbers peaked in 1989, flattening out to around 15,000 in the late 1990s and 10,000 in the early 2000s). Rockhopper was successful in its application to operate in 2003; the two airlines carried 10,000 passengers together (hardly growing the market at all). Numbers fell to just under 5,000 in 2004. Blue Islands then dropped the route, operated it seasonally (often with Islanders) from 2006-9, and did not fly during 2010 nor 2011 (its last year of ACI operations).
Having established its main base of operation in Guernsey, Aurigny wasn't going to restart a route which would both lose money in its own right and feed potential ACI residents away from GR's GCI-mainland and onto others' JER-mainland services. This decision is almost purely commercial and not directly political; States members have mandated it to minimise its losses - they have not mandated it to run an ACI-JER service justified by wider economic benefit (much as it used to). This comes down to a complete lack of vision from Alderney States members who spend far too much complaining about Aurigny and almost none trying to improve it, much as I pointed out at the time of their ludicrous requête. Asking it to run a (lossmaking) ACI-JER service is a decision involving taxpayers' money, so it's not one for Aurigny to make on its own.
The take-up of the 2013 trial was more than satisfactory, but the States of Alderney did not fund the operation thereafter. It's a ridiculous way to fund an airline and a measure of how poor the States of Alderney's efforts at actually working with (not against) the States of Guernsey and Aurigny to improve services have been that it had to be paid for in this way (and also a measure of how unaware T&R is of Alderney's requirements). Subsidies for ACI-JER are just the same as subsidies for ACI-GCI and should be rolled into the same debt write-offs/PSOs.
Every minute States of Alderney members spend slagging off the States of Guernsey's airline in the pages of their press is a minute they could use to lobby Gavin St Pier, the wider States of Guernsey and Aurigny as to the economic benefits of the links they want. I know not whether it is conviction or expertise they lack, but for as long as they spend more time engaged in meaningless, introspective and grandstanding debate than attempting to engage constructively with the issues at hand and the organisations and people that have a more direct role in choosing where, when, for whom and at what cost Aurigny is asked to fly, it shall be one or the other. Glad to see efforts to restore it, but unsurprised to see it wasn't States of Alderney members who took the initiative. Stop blaming. Take responsibility.
http://www.itv.com/news/channel/2017...boost-tourism/