Virgin Atlantic has launched a new route from London Heathrow to Austin, Texas.
The airline will fly from London Heathrow to Austin–Bergstrom International Airport four times weekly from Wednesday 25 May 2022.
Flights will operate on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. It’s not immediately clear whether the route initially operate on a summer seasonal basis or year round.
The route will be operated with a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft.
This is Virgin’s first ever route to Texas and its first new route to the US in many years. It is even longer since Virgin launched a destination in the US that is not a hub of its transatlantic joint business partner Delta.
BA Airbus A319 aircraft at London Heathrow (Image Credit: British Airways)
British Airways will suspend flights from London to Bilbao from Sunday 27 March 2022.
Before COVID-19, BA flights to Bilbao operated from London Gatwick airport, having not long transferred from London Heathrow.
The route has more recently operated from Heathrow along with all other Gatwick short haul flights, but with brief periods of suspension. Indeed, no flights will operate from Saturday 8 January until Friday 4 February 2022.
Air Europa Boeing 787 Dreamliner Aircraft (Image Credit: Air Europa)
International Airlines Group is to end its planned purchase of Air Europa.
The existing deal, as agreed in 2019, is to be terminated. The two sides are to explore “alternative structures” – though it is hard to envisage what be agreed to satisfy all of IAG, Globalia and competition regulators.
As former CEO Willie Walsh would say this was intended to be a “transformational” deal. It was meant to solidify Iberia in Central & South America and make Madrid a “360 degree” global hub in Europe to rival Amsterdam and Frankfurt.
Air Europa was intended to be a subsidiary of Iberia and positioned as a “value carrier” in IAG in the mould of Aer Lingus. Although not confirmed at the time, it was likely that Air Europa would be rebranded to align with Iberia. Otherwise, IAG would have had no less than 5 different brands in Spain.
The deal was renegotiated in early 2021 with the purchase price reduced to €500 million and deferred until 2026.
British Airways is to restart short haul flights at London Gatwick Airport from Tuesday 29 March 2022.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic all BA short haul flights at Gatwick were suspended, apart from a daily flight to Glasgow. This operates as a “W pattern” flight as Heathrow – Glasgow – Gatwick – Glasgow – Heathrow.
BA has today, Tuesday 14 December 2021, confirmed its short haul flights network at Gatwick.
There are 35 routes, operated with a fleet of 18 Airbus A320 series aircraft. This is an initially smaller network than before COVID-19 and some Gatwick slots will be leased to easyJet.
The first routes will be Amsterdam, Larnaca, Paphos, Seville, Tenerife and Verona. Routes will be progressively added throughout April and May.
The new schedule includes many former Gatwick routes. As was par the course for BA at Gatwick, flight times vary by day.
There are also routes such as Athens, Berlin Brandenburg, Madrid and Milan Malpensa which were not immediately operated at Gatwick before COVID-19.
Some former Gatwick routes such as Genoa appear to be suspended.
These will all later transfer to a new airline company BA EuroFlyer Ltd. This does not yet have an Air Operators Certificate. It is possible that, like BA CityFlyer at London City, it will have its own flight number sequence, so there may be flight number changes when this takes place.
Some former Gatwick routes are expected to stay at Heathrow only. These include Algiers, Funchal, Jersey, Naples and Porto.
There are no UK domestic routes. These may continue to operate at Gatwick with Heathrow aircraft and crews.
At the time of publication schedule changes are still being made on ba.com. It may be a while before timetables are fully updated & accurate. The winter season schedule is likely to be considerably smaller.
British Airways has relaunched plans for a new route from London Heathrow to Portland, Oregon.
In late 2019, BA announced plans for a new route from London Heathrow to Portland from June 2020. After an initial delay, the route launch was cancelled due to COVID-19.
The route has now been put back on sale from Friday 3 June 2022.
BA has today also relaunched its route to Pittsburgh. The airline has also relaunched summer seasonal flights from Gatwick to New York JFK and suspended Gatwick – Las Vegas.
British Airways is to return to the city of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania on Friday 3 June 2022.
BA launched a new route from London Heathrow to Pittsburgh in 2019 after an absence of nearly 20 years. The city, along with a number of long haul routes, was suspended in 2020 due to COVID-19.
The route has now been put back on sale. The return of Pittsburgh was expected. BA had advised it aims to reinstate much of its pre-COVID-19 routes to North America by 2022.
BA has today also relaunched London Heathrow – Portland. The airline has also relaunched summer seasonal flights from Gatwick to New York JFK and suspended Gatwick – Las Vegas.
Flights from London to Pittsburgh will operate four times weekly from London Heathrow Terminal 5. These will be operated by Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner aircraft in a three class, Club World, World Traveller Plus and World Traveller, configuration.
Concorde and Santa Claus, Rovaniemi, Finland, 1997. Photo by Eric Chretien/Gamma-Rapho published under license from Getty Images. Unauthorised distribution and reproduction prohibited.
Welcome to London Air Travel’s final Monday Briefing for 2021.
This is our last bulletin before a break over Christmas and New Year. Thank you for reading in what has been another challenging and uncertain year. Our next bulletin will be on Monday 17 January 2022.
BA Prepares Summer 2022 Schedules
It’s normally at this time of year airlines have finalised their schedules for the summer season ahead of Christmas & New Year sales campaigns.
Whilst many Oneworld alliance airlines have confirmed new routes for next year, there’s a conspicuous silence so from BA. So far we only know of two new routes to The Azores for summer 2022. We don’t know of any new long haul routes, nor a firm start date for short haul flights at Gatwick.
It was only a few weeks ago that the airline was expected to operate the same level of capacity to North America in 2022 as 2019.
There are signs that these plans are being scaled back. Last week, BA processed a lot of long haul schedule updates for the summer season. Whilst the the Airbus A380 aircraft will return to Boston and Chicago O’Hare next summer, this will not be further into the season – 15 May & 1 June 2022 respectively.
The return of the A380 to San Francisco has also been pushed back to 1 May 2022. Double daily flights to Houston and Seattle have also been pushed back to 8 May 2022.
There is anecdotal evidence of passengers cancelling flights due to the uncertainty caused by increased testing and self-isolation requirements. Readers have no doubt heard of friends cancelling plans for Christmas overseas. Data provided by ForwardKeys to the Financial Times shows that transatlantic bookings between the UK and US have fallen back sharply since the Omicron variant was reported to the World Health Organisation.
British Airways Airbus A380 at take off, London Heathrow (Image Credit: Heathrow)
British Airways is to reinstate Airbus A380 flights from London Heathrow to Washington Dulles from Sunday 27 March 2022.
The airline has today, Friday 10 December 2021, updated its timetables.
The Airbus A380 will operate daily on flights BA293 and BA292 between Heathrow and Washington from Sunday 27 March to Saturday 29 October 2022.
BA is also due to reinstate further Airbus A380 routes to North America in the summer of 2022.
The return of the A380 to San Francisco has been postponed from 27 March 2022 to Sunday 1 May. It has also swapped from flights BA285 & BA284 to BA287 & BA286.
Qantas London Heathrow Lounge (Image Credit: Qantas Airways)
Qantas has reopened its lounge at London Heathrow Terminal 3.
The highly regarded joint business and First Class lounge has been closed since Qantas first suspended scheduled passenger flights from Heathrow at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This does provide a welcome additional lounge option for eligible passengers of British Airways and other Oneworld alliance member airlines when flying from Terminal 3.
Flybe De Havilland Canada Dash 8-400 Aircraft, London City Airport (Image Credit: London City Airport)
Welcome to London Air Travel’s Monday Briefing for the week beginning 6 December 2021.
Flybe To Be Sold Again?
Today’s Telegraph has an interesting story – not online at the time of “going to press” – that Cyrus Capital is looking to sell Flybe.
Cyrus Capital was a member of the Connect Airways consortium that bought Flybe along with Virgin Atlantic and Stobart Air. It was described at the time by then IAG CEO Willie Walsh as “a business model that doesn’t work with shareholders that have suddenly cottoned on that they’ve bought a dog”.
Cyrus bought the assets of Flybe, using a vehicle known as Thyme Opco Ltd – now renamed Flybe Ltd, after it went into administration in March 2020.
Last month, Flybe announced with great fanfare that it is to start operations from a base in Birmingham in early 2022. It also plans to have a fleet of up to 32 De Havilland Canada Dash 8-400 turboprop aircraft.
The Telegraph reports that the owners of Flybe are looking for a new investor to operate Flybe in partnership for around a year before the airline is sold. Airlines such as Aurigny and Blue Islands are said to have been sounded out.
It is claimed that a sale of the airline would come with the London Heathrow bmi remedy slots that that the “old” Flybe acquired from BA. These 186 weekly slots, equivalent to 12 return flights a day, were taken back by BA in June 2020 after Flybe entered into administration. They were readvertised to potential bidders, but with a warning they were subject to a legal dispute.
However, a filing with Airport Coordination Ltd from earlier this year shows that 86 weekly slots for the winter 2021 season were transferred back from BA to Flybe.
This latest development will fuel speculation that the motives behind the purchase of Flybe’s assets out of administration were primarily to realise the value of its Heathrow remedy slots.
This is particularly so when the wisdom of launching a new regional airline is questionable after many rival airlines have moved to replace the routes formerly operated by Flybe and business travel is likely to remain depressed well into 2022.
