British Airways back to Guernsey in the Channel Islands
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 20 April 2026
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It is more than 40 years since BA last connected its main base, London Heathrow, with the Channel Island of Guernsey. I was on board the first departure from the isle – a notable operation with both pilots and all but one of the cabin crew being Guernsey born and bread.
While I waited for the flight I talked to Zoe Gosling, Lead Marketing Officer at Visit Guernsey – who had just flown in from Heathrow.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. |
| 0:06.5 | It's Monday the 20th of April. |
| 0:09.0 | Well, this is the time you're listening to it. |
| 0:11.8 | In fact, I'll take you 24 hours back to Sunday the 19th of April, |
| 0:16.2 | the day of the first British Airways flight from London Heathrow to the island of Guernsey in |
| 0:23.6 | well decades. I am not on that flight, I'm actually on the converse one flying back. |
| 0:30.6 | British Airways Flight 1345 which is departing soon but not before I've had the chance to talk to Zoe Gosley. Zoe is the lead |
| 0:39.6 | marketing officer for the States of Guernsey, which is the island's government. Zoe, you've just flown |
| 0:46.2 | in. How was the flight? I mean, it was wonderful. We're very, very fortunate with the conditions. |
| 0:51.1 | It was smooth. It was on time. And it was surprisingly emotional. Just looking across at the Airbus It was smooth, it was on time and it was surprisingly emotional. |
| 0:55.0 | Just looking across at the Airbus A319, there is the flag of Guernsey fluttering from a window of the flight deck. |
| 1:03.0 | That's right, and it's just really marvellous to see. |
| 1:06.0 | This first, the inaugural flight that's come in has a Guernsey captain and crew and so i think that's what's |
| 1:12.7 | made an extra special flight today but look there's a departure board there's flights going off to |
| 1:19.3 | london gatwick london city Manchester southampton why do you need a flight to london heathrow or indeed |
| 1:26.3 | for many travellers' points of view, |
| 1:28.3 | from London Heathrow? I think for the consumer choice is everything, and if this provides |
| 1:34.6 | an easier way for people to reach us, then that can only be a good thing for the islands. |
| 1:39.8 | And of course, having a well-known brand comes with a very large database of people that we can put Guernsey in front of that they may not have considered before. |
| 1:49.0 | Okay, and I guess for a lot of people, my kind of reckoning of the value of this service is that, frankly, there's some wealthy people on the island of Guernsey. I don't need to tell you that. |
| 2:00.4 | And they will |
| 2:01.2 | be able to transfer effortlessly from Guernsey via Heathrow to Buenos Aires, to Cape Town, to |
... |
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