Sorry for being slightly off-topic:

I am travellig to St. Malo via JER in late June on a LH flight from DUS. I will have a couple of hours in Jersey before continuing to France with a ferry in the evening. I am surprised that there is huge price difference between HD Ferries (16 GBP) and Condor Ferries (28 GBP) on the Jersey-St. Malo route. Any reason why I should avoid HD as the cheaper option? Do they tend to cancel sailings?

Never travelled to/from JER on a ferry - is the ferry terminal close to "downtown" St. Helier or is it somewhat awkward to get there from the airport (I am travelling light)?

HD Ferries had a lot of problems last summer with their vessel, which gained them a lot of bad publicity and it is well documented on the internet. They’ve been operating again since Easter and so far, from what I can make out, have been fairly reliable, but of course the reputation still sticks somewhat. I wouldn’t have any problem choosing either of them but if you want complete reliability then I think Condor would be the safer option. There is a foot passenger ferry too, Compagnie Corsaire, which operates to St Malo.

The ferry terminal is well signposted from town. It is only around 10 minutes from the centre of St Helier but make sure you go to the Elizabeth Terminal where Condor and HD operate from; but the whole town is fairly compact and easy to navigate.

Interestingly, HD Ferries is owned by the same group as HD Air, formally BAC Express.

Thanks for your help.
Interesting. Have never come across them while searching. Quite strange that they do not have an English website and their online reservation system does not allow one-way bookings for sailings departing from Jersey.

Hmm, on the day I am travelling there are four sailings with 105 minutes - 1715 on Condor, 1745 on Corsaire, 1815 on Condor and 1900 on HD. As a foot passenger in late June - is it safe to just walk up and buy a ticket before departure or is there a risk that one does not get on board (I would guess not, but you never know)? Or are fares (much) higher for last minute ticket purchases?

My excuses again for this OT content, but I cannot think of any other place where I could get better first hand onformation.

I would imagine that you would be fine to purchase a ticket on the day in June. I don't think prices fluctuate too much and if you travel on a stand-by basis then the cost is likely to be reduced.

Does Jersey have duty on Aviation Fuel?Is it comparably low in relation to other EU airports,as a corporate operator is it beneficial to stop off there en-route to the Tracks for US/Caribbean?:ok:

No duty on fuel as such, but Avtur is more expensive than UK due shipping costs. Avgas is £1.09 per ltr at the moment.

How does Jersey fair in the grand scheme of fuel charges for Jet-a1 in comparision to the rest of europe?
Any idea?:ok:

JER's runway doesn't quite have the length needed (1700m) to send a fully loaded pax jet off to the US/Caribbean!

I'm referring to biz jets operating from jersey:ok:

Hi VickersV

Jersey does have biz routing out of the Island to East Coast of American
and also to Dubai and various other destination in a that area as well

Yet another change on the JER-DUS route - flight has been pushed back by approx. 2 hours and is now scheduled to be operated by an Eurowings BAe 146-200. First it was an ATR72, then a CRJ700. Not sure what the reason for the equipment change is, but I was quite sceptical about the CRJ700 right from the beginning.

Well, it was a CRJ-700 last week. Hope they stick with that!

JetPhotos.Net Photo » D-ACSC (CN: 10039) Lufthansa Regional (Eurowings) Bombardier CRJ-701 by John Fitzpatrick

Runway Resurfacing
 

Soooo the runway is being resurfaced. Except for all the NIMBYs whinging about noise etc it seems to be a good decision taken fairly easily by the good old United States of Jersey (for once).

One problem, during the resurfacing program (to run between Sep 08 and Apr 09) late night extensions WILL NOT be being granted by the airport. Once 2100 ticks past, the runway is closed whether your flight has arrived/departed or not, and it will be diverted/cancelled.

The runway will only open for emergencies (could be interesting landing on molten asphalt... but hey). Air ambulance services to SOU etc will have to be operated by helicopter. I hear it still remains to be seen whether this will be from the airport or another location on the island.

Would it not have made sense to start the works in October at the end of the season where airlines had a chance to schedule their a/c in earlier?

It looks the best BA can do for Sep/Oct is to schedule their nightstopper in at 2100L... pushing it a bit? Also BD is due out to LHR at 2045, which looks unchanged for the winter schedule as well (place your bets as to whether they hang around that long or not though) so the detective in me can envisage problems there also.

Could be an interesting winter, I certainly won't be booking any tickets for evening flights!

i think you will find that that the be/ba late arrivals and the bd turnaround has been pretty good in recent months although i did hear bd crew had rest/meal break whilst in jer. maybe that will have to have a rethink.

It was the same in Liverpool when we did ours. If your not in, or on final by close,it's off somewhere else! And we stuck to it!

Macuser,

we do have crew meals loaded for the turnaround. Last few times I've done the rotation, we had plenty of time for our turnaround. Seem to remeber the biggest wait was for the loadsheet before we could close up and go (on time, of course:ok:)

I see that although we don’t yet have the full winter schedule, Jet2 have already launched a twice weekly Belfast service for summer 2009. Flights operate on Wednesdays and Saturdays with the latter a ‘W’ pattern off Leeds/Bradford (I assume).

The odds were on that we would see an enhanced Belfast schedule; it is one of the last major UK cities to remain solely a Saturday flight. I’m hoping too for an increase in Glasgow flights for 2009, which is in a similar position, and seems an obvious route for the likes of Easyjet.

BA to announce s/h cuts at LGW next week
 

It's been reported that BA will announce a significant cutback of its s/h flying at LGW. An announcement is expected on Friday?

It will be interesting to see if, as many have predicted, there is a stronger link developing with BE (which is supposed to move to the North Terminal from October?). The big question, will this affect Jersey and might we see a codeshare with BE?

735s are being phased out over the Winter; I know 319s are being brought down from LHR and some are already scheduled on the JER route, but it wouldn't surprise me if JER is affected ...

If this happens then i know a little orange airline hovering over the JER-LGW route with enough capacity to slip right in there......

B.A. Airbus
 

I understand the Airbus will be operateing some Gatwick-Jersey services from next week.
The B.A. Jersey-Gatwick-Jersey service out performs Flybe on this route in passenger numbers, this could well be to do with the name, people still prefer to go by B.A.
Yes it has been reported that B.A. will cut back 5% of Domestic and European service ,so Jersey might drop a rotation on some days.
We will have to wait and see what W.W. has to say on this subject at the end of the week.