Schedule changes to restore reliability

Blue Islands is making some temporary changes to its schedule to improve resilience following a recent spell of disruption, caused by fleet challenges. These changes cover the period through to mid-July. This means our customers can have full confidence in the timely operation of the updated schedule.

We apologise to those that have been affected by the recent disruption and to those impacted by the upcoming changes. We understand the inconvenience this causes, and we wish to assure our customers and stakeholders we are working hard to resolve these fleet issues and fully restore our usual high on-time performance levels.

The situation is by no means unique to Blue Islands, airlines globally are facing unprecedented supply challenges (from raw materials to engines, major shortages in supply are impacting fleet serviceability and availability of lease engines and spare aircraft).  In our case, we are currently managing two specific fleet challenges:

• Firstly, a new aircraft due to join our fleet at the start of Q1 has been delayed by almost four months. When an aircraft changes operator it is subject to an intensive programme of maintenance to ensure that it then delivers the highest standards of service and safety. These works have taken the lessor longer to complete than forecast, which is regrettably out of our control. We are pleased to confirm this aircraft is now ready to join our fleet and we now await final UK CAA approval for it to enter service in a matter of days. 
• Secondly, another aircraft is currently grounded after a newly-installed engine ingested debris at an airport. The engine concerned required parts and maintenance services to return it to operations. There are extended delays in the availability of both. We have also been seeking an alternative new engine and expect to be able to conclude this in the coming weeks.                            

In the latest independent figures published by the UK Civil Aviation Authority last week, Blue Islands operated 531 of its scheduled 540 flights in March (98.5%) carrying over 22,000 passengers and with 80% arriving on time.  Whilst 1.5%* of flights (9) were cancelled, the UK, Jersey and IOM average was 1.8%* of flights that were cancelled which provides some wider context.

With these mitigations in place, we have created sufficient planned resilience to better ensure we can deliver the dependable service our customers rightly expect of us. Customers booked on flights affected by the short-term changes planned until 21 July will be contacted directly to advise them of the change. If a flight is no longer operating, we will automatically rebook passengers to the best alternative. Customers can then opt to choose another flight if preferred without any charges via self-service options.

Changes will impact four of 18 routes in Blue Islands’ network to and from the Channel Islands.  All other routes will be unaffected and steps have been taken to safeguard essential morning and evening connectivity for key island services including hospital patient transfer and freight.

*Source: CAA

Notes:

• Blue Islands has 214 weekly flights across its network planned in its summer schedule and 28 of those (13%) will be temporarily removed from its schedule
• Routes with a reduction in services are Jersey to Birmingham; Jersey to Bristol; Jersey to Exeter and Guernsey to Southampton. A minimum of a daily service to Bristol, Exeter and multiple daily services on the Guernsey-Southampton route will be maintained.
• Blue Islands flights on all other routes – Jersey to Southampton, Guernsey, East Midlands, Norwich, Paris CDG, Newcastle, Zurich, Rotterdam, Guernsey to Jersey, Exeter, East Midlands, Newcastle, Norwich and Rotterdam – are unaffected.