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Welcome to London Air Travel’s Monday Briefing for the week beginning 7 December 2020.
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BA Returns To Gatwick
BA should resume long-haul flights at Gatwick this week.
Flights to Punta Cana and St Lucia are currently scheduled to resume this Thursday, 10 December. A number of destinations follow on Friday including Antigua, Barbados, Bermuda, Cancun and Kingston.
Grenada, Montego Bay and St Kitts return on Saturday, with Providenciales due to follow on Sunday.
This restart of a number of the above routes has been postponed many times before, so this is all subject to change.
London Heathrow Route Updates
In other route updates at London Heathrow, BA continues to reinstate scheduled passenger flights.
Last week, BA reinstated scheduled passenger flights to Bahrain, Boston, Buenos Aires, Cape Town, Kuala Lumpur, Mexico City, Philadelphia, Riyadh, Santiago, Tel Aviv and The Maldives.
This week the airline is also due to return to Kuwait, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, The Seychelles and Tokyo Haneda.
In a sign of progress on at least some routes, BA will increase Dubai to three times daily from 10 December.
Also at Heathrow, Virgin Atlantic will operate its inaugural flight to Islamabad on Saturday and Lahore on Sunday.
London City Airport Publishes Its Masterplan
London City Airport published a revised masterplan last week.
The masterplan sets out its ambition to increase capacity so it is capable of handling 11 million passengers a year, with Air Transport Movements also increased from 111,000 to 151,000 a year.
The airport still has ambitions to expand its route network, with the return of transatlantic routes. However, with CityJet and Flybe having withdrawn from the airport – and a likely downsizing by BA CityFlyer which is serving just three destinations at present – this is going to be difficult to achieve.
Bonhams Vintage Poster Auction
If you are looking for a Christmas gift for an aviation enthusiast and happen to have a thousand pounds or so hiding down the back of your sofa, then look no further than Bonhams’ auction of vintage posters tomorrow.
The auction includes these vintage posters by Imperial Airways posters from 1936 and 1937.
Also of note this week:
NATS faces a revenue shortfall of over £400m. (Telegraph)
The Guardian has published a “long read” on the still unresolved mystery of how reports of a sighting of a drone caused chaos at Gatwick two years ago. (The Guardian)
Qantas is looking to reduce the number of cabin crew operating domestic flights between Sydney and Melbourne. (Sydney Morning Herald)
New South Wales Police have apologised after they allowed two German nationals to board a flight to Melbourne without undergoing quarantine in Sydney. (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
Late post publication updates:
[Reserved for updates throughout the day]
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