Review of Aurigny Air Services flight Southampton → Alderney in Economy

up close and personal

Hello and welcome to another Flight Report! 

This is a bonus FR covering my recent day trip to Alderney, a tiny island in the Bailiwick of Guernsey. While Guernsey technically isn't part of the UK, it is closely linked with the country, forming part of the Common Travel Area (CTA), basically meaning that flights between the bailiwick and UK are considered as domestic. To say that Alderney (or just Guernsey in general) is fairly unknown to the general public is quite of an understatement. In fact, Alderney is obscure my browser underlines the word in red, suggesting that I meant Alderley instead. Alderley is either an "Old English female given-name" or a village with a population of 351. So yeah… not exactly the most well-known either… 

Just to drive home how obscure the island is, when I was leaving, I was given a questionnaire with one of the questions being: "how did you hear about us?" Which is a question commonly asked in reference to a brand or website but less so for an actual place. 

Anyway, as we established, Alderney is a tiny island which is served by a tiny airport handled by tiny planes. Planes so tiny and unique, it's probably responsible for a large portion of the island's tourist traffic - including me! Yes, today we'll be flying on the Dornier 228, a plane on every avgeek's bucket list. These planes serve 2 destinations from Alderney: Guernsey and Southampton with a flight time of 20 minutes and 30 minutes respectively.

However, despite everything surrounding Alderney being tiny, what wasn't tiny is the price. This 30 minute hop costed me £100 single, which, at £1.51/km (or £0.94/mile) is more expensive than most business or even first class tickets. Despite that, I'd say this price is justified as most flights are less than 50% full with around 6-7 passengers. It's the only way Aurigny (with a silent 'g') could have a hope of breaking even (let alone profiting) from these flights. 

Fun fact: The word 'Alderney' appears 12 times in this FR, how do I know? Well, that's the number of 'typos' in here haha. 

I aim to offset all of my CO2 emission from flights. All emissions are calculated using the ICAO Carbon Emissions Calculator and I will be funding projects approved by The Gold Standard. The CO2 output for this flight is:

SOU → ACI → GCI → LGW: 78kg
Total for 2024 (so far): 1288kg

video report

Here's the video version of this FR, it's got pretty much the same thing content-wise.

southampton airport (sou)

Southampton Airport Parkway railway station. It is served by trains from around the UK including London and Manchester, except today. Because of maintenance works, I had to take a rail-replacement bus here instead.  

Walking to the airport. 

The pickup/drop off area. 

The airport car park with views of the apron. The white plane is an Eastern Airways Embraer E170 (G-CMLI) heading to East Midlands (EMA)… except she's not. When I looked up the schedule on FlightRadar24, I thought she was heading to East Midlands however I didn't bother scrolling up. That plane was supposed to head to Paris Orly (ORY)… at 6:30AM. Yes, she is 4 hours late. So late, in fact, that passengers for her next flight to East Midlands have already started showing up. 

A picture of the entire check-in area. Aurigny occupies 1 counter: the one on the far right with the yellow screen. 

Unsurprisingly, there was no one at check-in or security. There were so little people I was able to get a full one-on-one session with the security official who listed everything I should take out and asked me if I had any of those in my bag… one at a time. He was so surprised I didn't bring any liquids with me that he had to ask me 3 times, which I find hilarious. Although I can see why he's surprised, considering all the people that bring multiple massive bags of makeup and stuff through. 

The duty-free area. 

Anyway, here's the departures lounge. I honestly think Southampton might be my favorite UK airport. Why? Well, all large UK airports use the call-to-gate system, which I nicknamed the 'guess-the-gate' system, as I always leave the area early and guess which part of the airport my flight will leave from. It leaves the departures lounge crowded while the rest of the airport is deserted. Here at Southampton, they don't use the system… mainly because the departures lounge is the gate area. 

Another photo. Most of the people here are on the 06:30 Paris flight. They've been stuck here for over 4 hours, apparently it's due to a technical fault on the Embraer. 

The flight

Flight time today will be only 30 minutes and here's our route across the channel: 

There were only 6 of us on this flight. They basically checked us off on a list and once everyone turned up (and refueling is finished) boarding commenced. 

Nice picture of our plane. 

Some information about our plane:

Type: Dornier Do-228-200
Registration: G-OAUR
First flight: December 2015
Age: ~8 years
Config: Y17

One of 3 Dornier 228s in Aurigny's fleet (2 being 228NGs and 1 228 Classic). As a completely unrelated side note, I love how long the nose is on the 228, it resembles a duck beak (at least to me).

A photo of the cabin. It's definitely not suited to anyone who's claustrophobic (or tall). If you're curious, the height of this cabin is just slightly taller than an A320 with its overhead lockers. So you have to bend over quite a lot just to walk around. 

Here's the legroom. It's very tight. 

First views out of the window with a very nice view of the engine. 

Photo of the cockpit. This is probably the closest you can get to riding in the jumpseat. It's awesome seeing how everything works. 

Departing 25 minutes early… yes, really. That's the fun of flying tiny planes with very few passengers - schedules are simply a suggestion, you just go when you're ready! 

Oh and by the way, the Eastern E170 boarded around the same time as we did - to the cheers of the passengers… only for them to be stuck in the plane for another hour before finally departing 5 hours late. 

Takeoff! Bye bye Southampton!

Amazing views of Southampton Water - an estuary that flows out of the city. On the bottom you have the cargo/cruise terminal. If you look at the very bottom, you'll notice a long silver building by the dock. That's where the Titanic departed back in 1912 (but on the opposite side). It's so cool, especially as they've got a park nearby so you can get really close to the ships as they depart. 

Unfortunately, it is backlit so it's not great for photos

Anyway, enough of me talking about cruise ships. Pretty soon after that we're over the channel.  

Not much to 'sea' after that (sorry…), but welcome to a very wet and gloomy Alderney! It's always nice when a flight arrives early… but have you arrived so early you landed before your scheduled departure time? Yup, we arrived 30 minutes early on a flight with a 20 minute flight time ;). 

Parked on stand. 

alderney airport (aci)

One last photo of our plane as we head to arrivals. 

The car park outside.

There won't be a 2nd FR on my flight out of here but I did take some photos of the departures lounge when I left as a bonus. 

Here's the check-in desk.

In case it isn't obvious, there isn't really an airside here. You're just supposed to wait here, it almost feel like a cafe with an airport added onto it, especially with the seating arrangement and table covers. There were only 4 of us heading to Guernsey and there were more people picking up/dropping off relatives than passengers, which is hilarious. 

That doorway leads to the toilet, by the way. 

Here's the 'gate'. Security check is conducted during boarding. So you basically walk through a metal detector and your bag gets hand searched.

If you've read my Auric Air FR, you'll have seen a departures tent, but have you seen a departures hut? No? Well, you're in luck! 

Here it is. Technically this is the airside area? Since it's after security? But anyway, a safety video is shown on the TV and then you're led to the plane. 

I'll end this FR here. It (luckily) didn't rain as much as I thought it did, so I at least managed to get some exploring done on the island. Despite its small size, it's littered with history, primarily from the Second World War (the island was occupied as one of the closest German landmass to the UK). 

Thanks for reading!