Aurigny, Blue Islands and Loganair forge closer working relations to harness their collective power.
UK regional airlines Aurigny, Blue Islands and Loganair have formed a new partnership designed to extend their working relationship by offering a wider range of seamless travel connections across their route networks. The trio aim to coordinate the benefits for their frequent flyers as well as launching a new programme of co-operation to harness their collective buying power.
Partnerships already exist between Blue Islands and Aurigny and between Loganair and Blue Islands, so a new partnership for connecting flights linking the networks of Loganair and Aurigny will be established.
This will open-up a wide range of connections to and from Guernsey in particular, offering new connections to the north of England, Scotland and the Isle of Man at airports including Manchester, Bristol and Birmingham where the airlines’ networks meet. Existing links between the Loganair and Blue Islands networks – currently centred on Southampton and Manchester – will also be expanded. New one-stop connections such as Aberdeen to Guernsey and Isle of Man to the Channel Islands will provide frequent, year-round travel options on a single ticket.
Each airline operates its own frequent flyer programme and an early objective of the partnership is to align the programmes so that customers can earn and redeem benefits across all three airlines’ services. Clan Loganair, Aurigny’s FrequentFlyer and Blue Islands’ Blue Skies Club will remain, however, remain independent programmes. In total, the three airlines operate 54 aircraft and offer services to a host of UK regional communities from the Channel Islands in the south to the Shetland Islands in the north, serving a total of 40 airports within that area.
The trio say that the synergies and benefits for customers will be complemented by a new programme of cooperation between the airlines on technical and purchasing matters. ATR turboprops, for example, form the backbone of the fleet for all three airlines, and there are several areas of potential co-operation ranging from major maintenance checks, purchasing of aircraft and engine spares [which could also, of course, include helping one another with spares in emergencies].
Synergies in the training of pilots and engineers are expected to provide genuine operational and cost efficiencies for the airlines. They will also be working to use buying power collectively across their operations in areas such as the purchasing of fuel and ground handling.
