Air Alderney
 

This thread is for discussion about Air Alderney, so hopefully the main Alderney thread can be left to discussions about Alderney airport

Based on a Facebook post, it seems that a start date of July is not going to happen - the airline reports itself as being a few months behind its original plan.

https://en-gb.facebook.com/AirAlderney/

Anyone have any opinion as to when (or even whether) Air Alderney really will take on the commercial responsibility of running an airline ?

Latest news ?
 

Anyone know what is going on with Air Alderney ? Am beginning to wonder if somebody is having second thoughts about the whole enterprise

Yes, it would appear to be a real "money spinner" ! They do have a BN2 painted up in their colour scheme, though I don't believe that they have started to operate any services, yet. When they do, they are hardly likely to make more than pennies from a single route to & from Jersey!

I had this e mail from them a week ago....


Thank you for your enquiry and please may we apologise for the delay in responding to you.

We are working hard towards progressing with the start of our new routes however sadly we are currently experiencing a delay in being issued with the relevant licences.

Due to this delay we are unable to confirm our start dates, timetables or fares at present, however we will be flying from Solent(free airport parking) and Brighton to Alderney.

We have saved your enquiry and will respond to you in duecourse when further information is confirmed.

We thank you for your patience and continued support.

Kind Regards

Air Alderney Limited

This sounds like Brighton City airways MkII.

Solent Airport! ... The BIG reason why SOU is successful is because it has an airport rail station on a line from London, I don't know the stastics but a LOT of it's passengers shall be arriving/departing by train and not originating necessarily in the SOU area, just compare SOU and BOH figures, SOU has a rail station, BOH doesn't.

Lee-on-Solent on the other hand is about as remote as it is possible to be, passengers can fly to GCI, to then take a quickie connection to ACI, from pretty much anywhere in England, why on god's earth would they want to drive all the way to/from Lee-on-Solent to fly on an Airfix kit?

And as for Shoreham-by-Sea, JEA (aka Flybe) couldn't make JER work with Twotters, Brighton City Airways is another story and now Air Alderney want to fail also.

I'll give them about the same, perhaps slightly longer, life expectancy on these routes as BCA on their Beauvais route ... that I don't recall ever made it to Beauvais!

Wasn't it Pontoise not Beauvais? I recall that the French wouldn't provide Customs at Pontoise and the flights had to route via Rouen or Le Touquet. That fact alone meant that the service stood no chance of success, regardless of anything else.

Yes you are quite correct, how could I possibly forget a three letter identifier as POX :)

One or two more routes in prospect than I thought. They will find it extremely difficult (as all airlines have done) to make any money operating out of Alderney. But, at least they have the only aircraft that is ever likely to have a chance of doing so. I wish them well & hope that they make a go of it.

Whoever came up with those routes does not have a sound commercial knowledge, a rule of thumb is that at least one airport of the two needs to be a mainstream player and whilst ACI serving an island puts it in a slightly different category it is not a mainstream player such as JER and GCI whilst with ACI's limited facilities aircraft types and ranges are restricted.

ACI/SOU is perfect, the people who work at Aurigny or SOU may suggest how many of that route's passengers jump straight on a train heading towards London, Air Alderney could have come up with BOH as an alternative, OK BOH doesn't have a rail station but if they could undercut Aurigny on fares they might get a few passengers but coming up with a route to Lee-on-Solent ... Come on, stop messing us around and admit that this is a schoolboy project!

And as for Shoreham-by-Sea, being an ex West Sussex dweller I think that they are reckoning upon ESH being a viable alternative to London/Gatwick and London itself ... Trust me, it's not, Brighton City Airways liked to believe that and they are history and if Air Alderney continue with the mentality of another schoolboy project then they shall soon be history also.

Harry W
Time will prove you right or wrong but I personally do not think Lee on Solent is a bad idea at all. Living in both SW London and on Alderney I know that getting to the departure airfield is costly – parking at SOU airport is extortionate (and more so recently – the cost this year being roughly double last year – £82.50 for 15 days in November). The alternative train service is time consuming and fares on South Western are c £40 a person return. And going by rail for me involves a bus to the station, a change of train at Woking or Basingstoke and invariably no seats on the (fast) Waterloo to Weymouth train.
When I do drive to SOU I always go down the A32 Meon Valley route which without turning off towards Bishops Waltham and Eastleigh pretty well ends up at Lee!
So a quiet airport that I can drive to as easily as SOU and park for nothing sounds a pretty good bet. But, of course, each to their own and being able to drive to Lee or take advantage of a free transfer service from Fareham Station (I think that was spoken of) might well work. Whether Shoreham will work I agree is more debatable.
You have to add into the mix the reliability of the service (NB Aurigny with their pool of 4 Do228s have been pretty good these last few months) and the nature of the staff – there being one Aurigny employee at SOU who has a distinct customer unfriendly approach that must make him the best marketing agent for Air Alderney (NB the other two are brilliant by the way).
So in short I will certainly give Air Alderney ex Solent a try and wish them luck.

toscana24,

Have you checked the Solent Airport website ... They have a special pilot path thru a security gate and to the beach in two minutes, and just outside the gate is a shack where they can get their fish & chips and ice cream ... Agreed, SOU is frigging useless :)

Thanks Harry
Sounds like a good idea - leave kids on beach at Lee; fetch them when plane is about to depart. 40 mins to ACI and then 5 min drive to the beach there. 1 hour beach to beach!

There are a number of issues that would need to be resolved before Solent could be considered as a viable airport for scheduled services.

Right now there are no navigation aids or IAPs. No runway or approach lighting. No Air Traffic Control, only an A/G radio service. No terminal. RFF only A1 with A2 on request.

No doubt in time all these issues could be addressed though at a cost. There is certainly development planned for Solent but it appears to be centred on g.a. I have seen nothing published that indicates development for potential airline operations (unless I am missing something), though one might have assumed the airline would have had some contact with the airport operator to discuss its plans.

Meanwhile it appears Air Alderney have taken delivery of their first aircraft with a second to follow shortly, as reported on the Aurigny thread.

Does anyone know what is happening with Air Alderney? G-BJED returned to Scotland late last year, and I see that the a/c is offered for sale on the Cormack website (Britten Islander BN2T for Sale | Cormack Aircraft Services, Specialist light aircraft maintenance, Glasgow - it may be out of date, of course). Their facebook page has also disappeared.

Playing at being an airline, perhaps. Is it all make believe & , will it ever happen ? My guess is that it is all fantasy &, if it ever happens, won’t last for long. I can hardly hold my breath !

In yesterdays Guernsey Press there was a notice that Air Alderney had applied for a license (GTB154) to transport post and freight between Alderney & Guernsey.

It has been reported that one of the ex. Ghana Air Force Defender's is in a hangar at Biggin Hill in full Air Alderney c/s marked up as 2-BILL.

Interesting news, & a good indication that they might be serious. Don’t get me wrong - I wish them well, & they might very well end up as the Alderney successors to Aurigny; but this airline will never be a “money spinner” (with any of the routes that they might operate). Their best chance of survival would be if AUR does abandon their routes to the island. Other than that ? I fear for them.

Air Alderney now seem to have put plans for a fixed wing operation on hold and decided to charter a helicopter instead.
Anyone understand what the overall plan is ? I'm scratching my head on this a bit

There is a press release copied on their facebook page that gives their current situation. It all sounds rather confusing:

Press Release 12/02/2018

We are pleased to announce that the States of Alderney have issued Air Alderney with our route licence to carry freight and passengers from Alderney - Jersey - Alderney.
Furthermore, subject to the decision under consideration of the Guernsey Air Transport Licensing Board; the States of Alderney have also granted us our route licence to carry freight from Alderney - Guernsey - Alderney.
We thank all our supporters that wrote messages of support to share with the Guernsey Licensing Board and continue to keep our fingers crossed.
We are one step further by gaining some of our route licences however still have a few more steps to confirm before being able to publish our timetable and fares.
We can however confirm that we will be commencing with our Jersey and Cherbourg routes of which we will be able to advise operation dates very soon!
We are still working towards obtaining our own AOC with 2-REG however during our application process we were advised that the CAA would no longer issue an Air Transport Licence to new AOC’s issued by the 2-REG. In turn this would mean that we would not be able to fly to the UK or France should we obtain our AOC with 2-REG presently.
We therefore looked at alternative means to enable our operations to commence as soon as possible and in order to meet the requirements of Alderney and its people.
We were able to secure a lease with Heli Holland in order to lease a EC-155 helicopter with crew. This aircraft is registered on Heli Holland’s Dutch AOC and will be re-positioned to Alderney in due course.
Furthermore, we were able to enter into an agreement with Ben Air in order for our BN-2T Islander aircraft to be registered on their Danish AOC.
The above has not deterred us from obtaining our own AOC with 2-REG and we are hopeful that the CAA and DFT find a resolve to this issue soon at which point we would be operating all our routes under Air Alderney’s own AOC.
Thank you again to all our supporters.

I bet the per kilo freight rates for a rotary winged operation are something to behold!

The views of an interested outsider here...

Is noise pollution not going to be an issue? The peaceful natural environment is Alderney's main attraction to visitors (like me last summer!). The Dorniers are a little noisy but the noise is not half as pervasive as that of an EC-155. And as has been mentioned, freight costs on a heli must be eye-watering!

They seem to be having difficulties getting access to the UK and France markets with 2-reg aircraft. I'm not an expert on this stuff, but if so why not just get their aircraft G-reged?

By coincidence, Isles of Scilly Travel announced yesterday that they are starting a heli service from Land's End to St Mary's (and thus increasing noise pollution in this year's holiday destination :) ). I'm struggling to see the benefits of heli over fixed wing...

Noise pollution ? Yes, but I don’t think that there will be so many flights operated that this will be a serious problem. More to the point, what a way to establish a profitable new service - not ! If Air Alderney were intent on setting themselves up to fail, they couldn’t have thought of a better way to do it than using a helicopter instead of a BN2 !

What was their purpose in life and reason for existing supposed to be? Do I remember incorrectly in that it was supposed to be that they could be cheaper?

jensdad

A heli operation to St. Mary's or Tresco?

It appears to be just to St. Mary's but the website isn't too clear. Not sure if we're allowed to post links to commercial websites here, but it's on the 'Isles of Scilly Travel' website, there's a tab at the top entitled 'Helicopter'.


Sorry for thread drift!

Must be a new just eat service starting up with the helicopter or a very expensive bag of jersey royals saying that the recent curry takeaway service to France from Portland anything can happen

Is anything actually happening with this company?

Regarding the recent 'curry takeaway service' to France your referring to it was from Lee on Solent to an airport near Bordeaux unless I'm mistaken and there was a similar one by helicopter from Portland to France I'm unaware of.

From the Air Alderney Facebook page today

https://scontent-lht6-1.xx.fbcdn.net...a7&oe=5B366B67



Air Alderney Ltd
3 hrs ·

Press Release 06/04/18
We are pleased to advise that our Alderney to Lee-on-Solent and Guernsey to Alderney route licences have been approved.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who wrote in support of our applications for these routes.
We have been able to re-arrange our meeting with Jersey Airport which was initially cancelled due to the snow fall.
Whilst Jersey Airport are keen to accommodate Air Alderney it is clear that the applicable airport charges which will be incurred due to our aircraft arriving from Alderney which does not have the CAA recommended security screening, will be high. We are therefore working with the relevant authorities on how best these charges can be revised so that they are not applied to the fare/passenger.
We are also still liaising with the Guernsey Authorities in order to establish a check in area at Alderney Airport. Due to the length of time this is taking, we are sadly and rather frustratingly unable to confirm start dates of our operations as without a check in desk we cannot accommodate our passengers.
Once the location of the check in area is agreed by the Guernsey Authorities, we will need some time to equip this area accordingly.
Further to speculation resulting from a recent article; We would further like to take this opportunity to clarify that our BN2-T Islander Aircraft have been inspected by both the CAA and 2-REG and are fully compliant with all regulations resulting in the aircraft holding all relevant documentation.
On a more positive note, one of our aircraft will be returning to base in the coming weeks which will see the commencement of our ‘soft launch’. Our flight crew will be busy familiarising themselves with the routes and destination airports during this time.
We would like to thank the States of Alderney for their assistance in issuing our route licences.
Once again, we cannot thank you enough for all your support. It is taking longer than expected but please know that we are still 100% committed and we will get there

Still very quiet on the Air Alderney front. I wonder if it will stay that way.

Here on the other side of 50N its very quiet at Lee on Solent (aka Solent Airport). No ATC or AFIS (just Air/Ground), no instrument approach procedures and apparently no security infrastructure to support scheduled public transport flights. Who is going to pay for these? Hopefully the cost will not go on to my council tax bill!

I could be tempted to speculate on pigs may fly, but remember that they did at Lee on Solent not so long ago!

G-BJED departed in front of me from Biggin earlier this week. Didn't catch where it was off to but it's been around and about these last few weeks. No news besides

It is interesting to see that according to G-INFO the a/c is owned by Islander Aircraft Ltd, Cumbernauld, and is currently offered for sale on Cormack's website.

The maintenance programme on the Islander and Trislander is such that anything other than very short sectors is a no-no. Alderney-London (regardless of the airport!) is a complete no-hoper.

TCAS FAN, there is no requirement for security on an aircraft of less than 10t MTOW (which the Islander is by a long way). If commercial services from Lee on Solent were to be launched, they could be flown VFR and with no security, subject to a safety case for both - provided that the airfield remains licensed as it is today. No need for taxpayer involvement!

Skybus for example do not employee any security measure at either Lands End or St Mary's for commercial services on the Islander, other than the usual dangerous goods questions by check in staff.

I stand corrected on the security issue. With the changeable UK weather, in the absence of IAP cannot see that a VFR ony operation is going to be a commercially viable operation.

Air Alderney have just posted a picture of their fleet at Biggin Hill Airshow. It looks like an odd collection.

https://scontent.fgci1-1.fna.fbcdn.n...21&oe=5C2E99A4

I am always surprised how small the Bo 105 is in real life....