Aurigny Air Services, which acts as the flag carrier of Guernsey, endured a difficult Easter weekend due to extensive cancelations. The airline's routes to and from the Alderney were hit particularly hard, as neither of the aircraft that typically serve the island were available for use. This caused extensive disruption.
A limited fleet
Aurigny was forced to ground its flights serving Alderney Airport (ACI) for part of the Easter weekend, due to a perfect storm of maintenance issues and adverse weather. This has highlighted the limited nature of its two-aircraft fleet of Dornier 228NG planes which serve Alderney. As Simple Flying explored last year, these are the only Aurigny aircraft that can fly there, due to its short runways.
In a statement published on Facebook, Aurigny explained that the issues began when one of the aircraft underwent maintenance a few weeks ago. These revealed that certain components needed to be replaced before it could return to the skies. While this should have been a quick fix, it went wrong. Aurigny states:
"General Atomics did not have any of the required parts in stock, and had to manufacture them. After waiting for the manufacturing, the parts were delivered to us, at which point we realised that General Atomics had manufactured the wrong parts. We are now waiting for the correct parts to be manufactured, and in the meantime, the aircraft remains in our hangar in an unserviceable condition."
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From bad to worse
Aurigny expects that this aircraft will now be able to return to service on April 28th. As such, this already left its Alderney fleet rather stretched, with just one Dornier aircraft left. Then, on Wednesday, April 13th, just before the busy Easter weekend, this plane developed a technical issue. This required it to replace a part, which it couldn't simply swap from the other Dornier. As such, it ordered a replacement.
However, this wasn't expected to arrive until Monday, April 18th, which had the potential to further disrupt the carrier's Easter schedules. Luckily, General Atomics, which now owns the Dornier 228 program, then advised that the part could be switched in from the other aircraft if certain software changes were made. After this, a successful test flight occurred on Friday. However, Aurigny explains:
"Due to the foggy conditions on Friday afternoon, the aircraft was not used until Saturday morning, when, after operating the first flight of the day a similar technical problem returned."
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Back in action
After another brief spell on the sidelines, FlightRadar24.com shows that the affected aircraft (G-OAUR) eventually returned to full service on Monday, April 18th. However, by this time, the damage had already been done. With widespread cancelations to Aurigny's Alderney services, ITV explains that boats had to be chartered for passengers from Guernsey to complete their journeys.
All in all, the situation has thrown light on what can go wrong with such a limited fleet operating Aurigny's Alderney flights. As seen above, local politician Alex Snowdon has described the model as 'broken,' and called for a larger fleet. An alternative option could be to extend the runway(s) at Alderney Airport to accommodate Aurigny's larger ATR 72 turboprop aircraft.
What do you make of this situation? Have you ever flown on one of Aurigny's Dornier aircraft? Let us know your thoughts and experiences in the comments!
Source: ITV