Guernsey-based airline Aurigny has signed an agreement with Eastern Airways that will enable passengers to book flights from Guernsey on Eastern’s route network via Southampton to regional hubs including Manchester, Belfast City, Leeds-Bradford, Teeside, Aberdeen and Dublin in a single transaction.
By making the onward booking in a single transaction customers can also avoid the need to pay UK Air Passenger Duty (APD) twice.
Eastern Airways’ Managing Director, Tony Burgess, said, “We are delighted to announce and excited to commence this partnership with our friends at Aurigny, which will allow us to collectively provide greater connectivity focussed initially on our Southampton Airport hub.” He added, “By forging this partnership and joining our networks, we will now look forward to welcoming many more customers on board and providing them with an extended choice of simplified route options and seamless connectivity whether they be travelling for business or pleasure.”
Both operators are working with the developers of Worldwide by easyJet to align their booking system and allow a seamless single point of booking for each other’s services to or from Guernsey.
“This is great news for our customers as it is often a challenge in small market jurisdictions to offer the regional connectivity desired by all as demand does not justify direct flights,” said Aurigny’s Commercial Director, Malcolm Coupar. By teaming up with Eastern, the airline is able to offer customers a much wider regional network from Southampton.
As we come out of this pandemic, I expect we will see more airlines concentrate their operations out of certain hubs and that agreements between airlines will be more commonplace for the benefit of the customer. We are also working on agreements with other airlines offering services from the UK to develop ‘Worldwide by Aurigny’, which will offer customers connecting flights to Worldwide destinations booked via the Aurigny website.
Malcolm Coupar, Commercial Director at Aurigny.
