UK start-up Waves Technologies is preparing to launch a per-seat, on-demand air taxi service in August connecting the Channel Islands of Alderney, Guernsey and Jersey.
The offering is designed to plug the gap in the market for high-quality, flexible transport between the islands, which Wave says are currently poorly served by commercial airlines.
Guernsey-based Waves will take delivery in July of the first of three Cessna Grand Caravan EX single-engined turboprops. The remaining examples will be handed over by the end of the year, with service entry planned for early 2018.
Waves deputy chief executive Barrie Baxter says the service is a stepping stone to a much broader offering using longer-range aircraft with a wider mission capability. “We want to take the business further afield, but first we will prove the model with an inter-island service and listen to what market is calling for,” says Baxter.
Waves Technologies
The Caravans seat eight passengers in a club configuration, and have an endurance of about 1h. “These aircraft can reach the southern UK and northern France and we will serve those markets too if there is enough demand and capacity in the fleet,” Baxter says.
He is understandably bullish about Waves’ prospects, saying: “We have received phenomenal response from across the [Channel] Islands. People have been crying out for this type of service for some time.”
To illustrate his point, he cites the sharp fall in commercial airline movements between the islands over the past decade. “In 2007 there were 250,000 inter-island take-offs and landings, compared with only 150,000 today,” he says. “The demand hasn’t gone away. The scheduled carriers just aren’t providing an adequate service and we plan to make up for that.”
Seats are competitively priced against the local airlines, Aurigny Air Services, Blue Islands and Flybe, but Baxter says the Waves experience will be much better.
“We are not operating to a schedule,” he notes. “Through our online or app-based booking system, passengers simply request the date and time of travel along with their destination and the seat is booked. On some flights we might be transporting one passenger, on others eight. This is a volume business, and as the service becomes more and more popular, the passenger volumes will increase.”
Source: Flight International
