Gama Aviation takes Guernsey and Jersey governments to court over medevac contract loss
Why It MattersPublicly tendered air-ambulance contracts hinge on procurement transparency, so an incumbent's court challenge over scoring methodology can delay handovers and expose how thinly documented public-interest justifications sometimes are.
What happened
Gama Aviation has launched a legal challenge against the governments of Guernsey and Jersey after the two islands awarded their joint medevac contract to rival operator 247 following a tender process concluded earlier this year. The hearing opened before Lt-Bailiff Hazel Marshall, with Advocate Michael Adkins representing Gama Aviation and Advocate Penny Grainge representing the States, which acted through Health & Social Care (HSC).
Advocate Adkins outlined three grounds for the challenge: a late aircraft-type change requested by Jersey; a lack of transparency in Guernsey's reasons and scoring of the tenders; and irrationality in the evaluation of scores. He argued that the language used in summarising bids indicated proposals had been compared directly against each other, contrary to procurement rules requiring each bid to be scored independently during the moderation stage, and said it was as important to understand why 247 won as why Gama Aviation lost. Advocate Grainge is expected to argue the challenge itself is unfair given HSC's obligation as a public body to decide in the public interest, a position Advocate Adkins countered by saying that reasoning only applies absent plausible allegations that the decision breached the law.
247 is due to take over the service in December, when the current arrangement ends. Gama Aviation has operated the medevac service in Guernsey and Jersey since August 2020, using a Beechcraft King Air B200 on a 24-hour, 365-days-a-year basis, transferring critically ill patients to the UK for emergency treatment unavailable locally and flying approximately 280 patients from Guernsey to the UK each year.
Industry impact & what to watch
Contract disputes of this kind are a recurring feature of publicly tendered essential air services, where a single incumbent operator can lose a long-running contract on scoring methodology rather than on service delivery. Because health authorities must defend both the fairness of process and the public interest of the outcome, any ambiguity in how bids were moderated becomes the point of legal exposure, not the aircraft or crew performance itself.
Air-ambulance and medevac tenders typically weigh cost, aircraft type and availability against continuity of care, and the moderation stage is meant to score each bid independently before any comparison; Gama Aviation's core claim is that this separation broke down in practice. If the court finds the process irrational or insufficiently transparent, the December handover to 247 could be delayed or reopened, forcing the islands to reconsider timing for a service that runs every day of the year.
The next milestone is the court's ruling on the three grounds Advocate Adkins raised, and specifically whether Guernsey's scoring documentation withstands scrutiny over independent moderation. Whichever way it goes, HSC's own explanation of why 247's bid scored higher will carry as much weight as the ruling itself in shaping how future joint tenders between the islands are structured.
