Ports of Jersey agreed to defer fees of £3.2M to help Blue Islands 'keep afloat'

Jersey's Treasury Minister says more than £3M in landing fees Blue Islands owed to Ports of Jersey were deferred to keep the airline running.

Deputy Elaine Millar has been speaking to Channel 103 about the collapse of the airline, after confirming on Monday that it owed taxpayers £9.1 million in outstanding loan repayments when it ceased operations at the end of last week.

She says the island’s authorities as a whole had been trying for many months to help keep it going.

"Ports [of Jersey] agreed to defer payment [of landing fees] to help Blue Islands keep afloat.

"That's one of the reasons why we eventually had to decide we couldn't keep supporting it in that way."

"There had been various discussions going on about how they might go forward, but we decided that we cannot, as a government, keep putting taxpayers' money into a business that didn't appear likely to survive in the long term."

It was towards the end of 2024 that Blue Islands asked the government if it would defer repayments on an £8.5m loan given to it during the COVID pandemic because of its cash flow challenges.

This was agreed around the same time, Ports agreed to delay the collection of fees, now totalling £3.2 million.

£7.4 million was still owed from Blue Islands' COVID-19 pandemic loan (including interest) when the government approved two further loans of £1.2 million in September 2025 and a further £500,000 earlier this month.

Jersey's Treasury Minister says the government wanted to avoid Blue Islands saying it was going to stop trading when it had no contingency plan in place to maintain air links, adding that these things ‘move quite quickly’, and it needed to be prepared.

"If you are going to the UK for medical treatment, [people] use the Southampton link; they use the other regional links for university, people do rely on them, and we couldn't have them just go with no alternative."

Deputy Millar told Channel 103, they initially thought it would take longer than a month for Loganair to set up in Jersey.

"We were very aware of the impact on people having medical treatment; we were then aware that Loganair could start much more quickly than we thought."

Loganair stepped in within 48 hours to operate between Jersey and Guernsey, Southampton, Exeter and Bristol. 

READ: Loganair steps in to take some Blue Islands routes

READ: Aurigny announces inter-islands flights

It has been pledged up to £1.5 million by Jersey’s government towards its set-up costs, which are said to the ‘substantially more’.

Channel 103 understands that further routes from Jersey are planned to replace lost Blue Islands services, with East Midlands among the next planned, although no timings have been given.