Airline expects to break even after financial loss

Aurigny is on track to break even financially this year after losing millions of pounds last year, its chief executive has said.

The States-owned airline made a loss of £6.5m in 2024 compared with a £1.7m profit the previous year.

Nico Bezuidenhout said its financial position was better because it no longer needed to pay for the wet lease of aircrafts, where one airline borrows from another.

He said Aurigny had launched a partnership with airline Norse Atlantic UK to help develop and retain its pilots - creating a more simplified fleet.

He said: "Things are indeed looking much better.

"Last year's financial results were fundamentally a function of the vast expenditure we incurred for ACMI and wet-lease expenditure.

"When you remove those one-solve expenditures from our financial results of last year, we would again have achieved a profit as we did the year before and the year before that."

Aurigny's monthly review for June found about 85% of its flights were on schedule, with a lack of pilots being the main reason for flight cancellations.

Mr Bezuidenhout said the company should be at full capacity with its staff by the end of July and that its pilot head count had improved by 30% in the past three months.

He said: "So this issue addresses the retention of first officers and then the migration of those first officers back into Aurigny.

"We are now fully recruited - the last number of pilots are going through their conversion training and by the end of July we would be at full operational strength."

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