British Airways is to reinstate a connection between London Gatwick and Manchester after a hiatus of many years.
The route was suspended during a long process of “de-hubbing” BA’s operation at Gatwick with a focus on point-to-point traffic. It was a one of a number of domestic routes suspended at Gatwick including Aberdeen and Newcastle.
At present, timetables indicate that the route will operate once-daily. An early morning departure from Manchester will facilitate connections to long-haul flights at Gatwick.
BA is also transferring long-haul flights from London Heathrow Accra and to Gatwick from 28 March 2021.
More broadly, this does suggest that BA is intent on restoring its short-haul operation at Gatwick next summer and preserving its slot portfolio.
That said, as ever in the current environment everything is subject to change at short notice.
British Airways Airbus A350-1000 Aircraft (Image Credit: British Airways)
British Airways’ service from London Heathrow to Buenos Aires will operate via Sao Paulo from Sunday 28 March 2021.
The last non-stop service from London Heathrow to Buenos Aires is currently scheduled to operate on Friday 26 March 2021.
As a consequence of the stop for one hour at Sao Paulo Guarulhos International Airport, the journey time from London Heathrow will increase from 14 hours to 15 hours and 40 minutes.
The flight numbers to / from Buenos Aires will also change from BA245 / BA244 to BA247 / BA246.
This is expected to continue until Sunday 31 October 2021 at the earliest. Long time BA flyers may remember that BA used to fly to Buenos Aires via Sao Paulo many years ago. A non-stop service to Buenos Aires is likely to return when economic conditions allow.
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 of 2020.Our next Monday Briefing will be published on 18 January 2021.
What A Difference A Year Makes
12 months ago the airline industry was certain of its trajectory.
Consolidation was the order of the day. State intervention was a thing of the past. The days of making money in the good times, only to lose it all in a downturn, would never be repeated. Airlines had the financial resilience to withstand whatever challenges came their way.
Delta had pulled off a major coup, swooping LATAM out of Oneworld. It acquired, for some $1.9 billion, a 20% stake in the airline. That, along with its stakes in AeroMexico and Virgin Atlantic, are worthless as LATAM has entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Even as the COVID-19 outbreak was underway, former IAG CEO Willie Walsh confidently asserted:
“To be honest we’ve gone through all of this before. We’ve all seen it before.”
“We know whatto do in a time like this. We know how to respond.”
A planned near normal return to service for BA by the end of the year did not happen. There is at least positive news on the approval of vaccines against COVID-19 and pre-flight testing regimes underway.
That said, the fact that BA is barred from operating passenger flights to Hong Kong for two weeks following COVID-19 compliance failures, suggests airlines and passengers are going to have get used to extremely stringent measures in many territories for months to come.
Virgin Atlantic & Bain
What’s going on with Virgin Atlantic and Bain Capital?
Last week Sky News reported that Virgin had sold and leasebacked two Boeing 787 aircraft. According to recent filings at Companies House, there are further transactions involving Bain in connection with one of Virgin’s Airbus A350 aircraft.
Bain does of course have a connection with another Virgin airline as it owns the majority of Virgin Australia.
Staying with Companies House filings, Virgin Atlantic has yet to submit its annual accounts for the year to 31 December 2019. These should have been ready months ago. A cynic might wonder whether Virgin is waiting for a good day to bury bad news.
On a more positive note, Virgin is due to return to Cape Town this Sunday.
Coming Soon: The BA 747 Story
Over Christmas we will run a special series on the history of the Boeing 747 and some of its most memorable flights at BOAC and BA.
This will run over seven days from Christmas Eve to 30 December.
British Airways Coat Of Arms (Image Credit: British Airways)
British Airways has cancelled outbound passenger flights from London Heathrow to Hong Kong until Friday 18 December 2020.
BA will continue to send aircraft to Hong Kong with cargo only. Inbound passenger flights from Hong Kong to London Heathrow will operate as normal.
According to a report in the South China Morning Post, BA has been banned by local authorities from operating passenger flights to Hong until Friday 25 December.
This is after it was found that four passengers who travelled on a BA flight to Hong Kong on Tuesday had COVID-19. Another passenger’s documents were not checked properly by the airline.
Whilst BA has been banned from flying to passengers to Hong Kong for two weeks and flights have been taken off sale until 25 December, at the time of publication the airline has only cancelled flights to Hong Kong up to Friday 18 December. This suggests that BA is seeking an alleviation.
British Airways has launched a string of new summer seasonal routes from Southampton Airport.
These will be operated by its subsidiary BA CityFlyer, whose principal base is at London City Airport. For the past five years, BA CityFlyer has operated seasonal routes at weekends from UK regional airports. This primarily due to the closure of London City airport at weekends.
Summer seasonal routes at London Stansted and Manchester airports are cancelled next summer.
British Airways Route Network, Southampton (Image Credit: British Airways)
Next summer, BA will fly from Southampton to Bergerac, Berlin, Edinburgh, Faro, Florence, Ibiza, Limoges, Malaga, Mykonos, Nice and Palma de Mallorca.
Return flights typically operate 1 – 2 a week from early – mid May up to 31 October 2020. As these return flights are often “nested” in return flights from London City, it’s a safe assumption that many of these routes will operate from London City next summer.
Southampton has always seemed a logical choice given BA’s catchment in the South East. BA CityFlyer is operating a relatively high number of routes compared other regional airports previously served. No doubt the closure of Flybe is factor in BA CityFlyer choosing to fly from the airport next summer.
As these are new seasonal routes, the exact frequencies, timings and operating dates may change over the coming months according to commercial demand. There if course the unknown factor as to what travel restrictions will be in place next summer.
Welcome to London Air Travel’s Monday Briefing for the week beginning 7 December 2020.
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.
Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner (Image Credit: British Airways)
British Airways will reinstate a number of long-haul routes at London Heathrow in December.
This follows the easing of lockdown restrictions in England in December which had prompted the airline to operate many routes on a cargo only basis during November. Frequencies are also increased on a number of other routes.
As ever, schedules are subject to change at short notice. There is limited visibility on flight schedules. Timetables indicate some long-haul routes may return at London Gatwick later in December. However, these have been postponed at short notice many times before.
BA’s Galleries Club South and First lounges at Terminal 5 also reopen from 2 December.
By region, routes expected to return at Heathrow, or benefit from frequency increases, include:
North America
Destinations provisionally due to return in December include Boston and Philadelphia from 3 December as well as Atlanta and San Francisco from 10 December.
Flights from London Heathrow to Barbados will increase to daily from 9 December.
BA will continue to operate passenger flights to Chicago O’Hare, Grand Cayman, Los Angeles, Miami, New York JFK, Seattle, Toronto and Washington Dulles throughout December.
Central & South America
BA returns to Rio de Janeiro with three times weekly flights from 12 December.
Flights to Sao Paulo increase to daily from 2 December. BA will also provisionally fly to Buenos Aires and Mexico City from 4 December and Santiago weekly on Saturdays from 5 December.
Africa & Indian Ocean
BA reinstates daily flights to Cape Town from 3 December and to The Maldives from 4 December.
Flights to the Maldives are operated with BA’s latest Boeing 777-300ER aircraft which features a modified First Class cabin and the Club Suite in Club World.
Flights to Abuja increase to daily from 2 December. Accra also increases to daily from 3 December.
BA is provisionally due to return to The Seychelles from 12 December.
BA continues to serve Johannesburg, Lagos and Nairobi throughout December.
Willie Walsh, Chief Executive International Airlines Group (Image Credit: International Airlines Group)
Welcome to London Air Travel’s Monday Briefing for the week beginning 30 November 2020.
Willie Walsh Appointed IATA Director General
When Willie Walsh retired from IAG just under three months ago it seemed implausible that he could retire from aviation for a quiet life.
And so last week it was confirmed, after an official denial, that Willie will become Director General of IATA from April 2021.
Those who have followed Willie over the years know that whilst he has respected his peers at rival airlines – with one notable exception – he has a very low opinion of government intervention in the industry. He is also not afraid to publicly call out institutions, whether they be airports or government bodies, that hold back airlines.
On accepting his appointment last week, Willie wasted little time in criticising governments for their disjointed approach to keeping borders open during COVID-19:
My style will be different to what has gone before me. I too am a businessman. I too understand how Governments operate but I am even more unhappy and more critical of how they get things done or more importantly, in many cases how they have failed to get things done.
This year has been the most challenging ever but let us not forget that the Coronavirus did not stop us flying. We have continued to provide vital services and in many cases we were the key link in getting critical safety equipment to health services.
The virus did not stop our customers boarding our aircraft because we have demonstrated our ability to adapt and to ensure the safety of our customers and our people and we know they want to fly with us.
They have been denied the freedom we provide, not by a virus but by a disjointed political response and the restrictions put in place by certain Governments who have failed to adapt and to adopt the sensible measures that would have allowed almost normal air services to continue.
Willie will have to navigate competing agendas. IATA was quick to distance itself from widely reported comments by Qantas CEO Alan Joyce that positive evidence of having received a COVID-19 vaccine may be prerequisite to international travel.
Qantas of course has a large, and profitable, domestic network. Many of its rivals are wholly dependent on international travel.
Summer 2021 Airport Slot Waiver
Another issue where views of airlines diverge is the extension of airport slot waivers to the summer 2021 season.
Last week the Worldwide Airport Slot Board (WASB) which comprises Airports Council International, IATA and the Worldwide Airport Coordinators Group issued a joint recommendation for slot waivers to be extended, with some changes to usage rules, to the summer 2021 season.
Rather than simply waive the 80 / 20 rule it is proposed that airlines either have to temporarily hand back slots or, for slots they retain, they have to use them for more than 50% of the season.
This is resisted by some airlines and airports, including London Gatwick.
On the subject of slot usage, last week Airport Coordination Ltd, which oversees slot allocations at London airports, estimates Air Transport Movements (ATMs) will fall by 60% year-on-year over the three weeks covering Christmas and New Year.
That said, ATMs will increase by 50% week-on-week for the week beginning 14 December. BA probably accounts for a fair proportion of this and is subject to the airline not cancelling flights at the last minute.
The busiest days are expected to be 18 and 27 December and 3 January 2021.
Collinson COVID-19 Testing Facility, London Heathrow (Image Credit: British Airways)
Welcome to London Air Travel’s Monday Briefing for the week beginning 23 November 2020.
UK Government To Relax 14 Day Quarantine?
As airlines trial their own COVID-19 testing regimes on transatlantic flights, there are now hopes for at least a partial relaxation of the UK’s mandatory 14 day quarantine regime.
Airline CEOs remain deeply frustrated at the lack of clarity on government policy on quarantine and testing. Though, many are still keen to talk up their individual prospects.
United Airlines is in the second week of its trial to test all passengers flying on flight UA14 from Newark to London Heathrow on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays.
You can see a report from the first flight by Richard Quest from CNN International’s “Quest Means Business”. The pre-flight testing process is clearly aided by very light passenger numbers.
Also speaking to Richard Quest last week, Virgin Atlantic CEO Shai Weiss was optimistic about the prospects for recovery, pointing to a less than expected impact from England’s second lockdown. Bookings for 2021 are also said to be improving, possibly due to positive news on a number of vaccines against COVID-19.
Delta, which owns 49% of Virgin Atlantic, is less optimistic about the prospects of a London – New York travel corridor. CEO Ed Bastian told the Financial Times it would be easier to relaunch transatlantic flights to “just about any” other European capital.
Ed Bastian added “I think you will find on the continent several countries that are more open” and, due to the mandatory quarantine regime “I think New York – London is complicated.”
American Airlines and BA are starting their own testing trial on select inbound flights from Dallas / Fort Worth, Los Angeles and New York JFK from this Wednesday.
BA CEO Sean Doyle was quoted in The Times as saying “We’ve got an immediate crisis to deal with in the industry and we think testing in lieu of quarantine is a solution that’s staring us in the face. We just need clarity of policy.”
The Telegraph reports that the Transport Secretary Grant Shapps will today announce that England’s quarantine regime will be reformed from mid-December.
Passengers arriving from countries deemed to be a high risk will be able to stop self-isolating as soon as they receive a negative test result for COVID-19. However, this test must be taken from an approved supplier on arrival. In practice, this is expected to cut the mandatory quarantine period from 14 to around 5 days.
BA To Return To Dhaka?
The Daily Star Bangladesh reports that BA is in discussions with local authorities on a return to Dhaka after a hiatus of 11 years.
The route was previously suspended in 2009. Like the launch of Lahore and capacity increases to Islamabad, this points to a pivot by BA towards “Visiting Friends & Relatives” (VFR) traffic.
If you were to consult the Ministry for Speculation and Guesswork they might suggest that other VFR routes BA could reinstate include Kolkata.
It’s plausible that, if post COVID-19, passengers are less inclined to take indirect flights over direct flights, BA may also be able to return to destinations where it had lost traffic to Middle Eastern carriers. These could include routes in East Africa such as Dar Es Salaam, Entebbe and Lusaka.
JetBlue Airbus A321 Aircraft, Boston Logan International Airport (Image Credit: London Air Travel)
easyJet and JetBlue have both been unsuccessful in applying for slots at London Heathrow for the summer 2021 season.
easyJet and JetBlue had applied for 98 and 42 weekly slots respectively from the pool at Heathrow and none were awarded.
They were far from alone. Each season a large number of airlines apply to Airport Coordination Ltd for slots from a pool of available slots. Almost all get nothing. Slots from the pool are very hard to come by as they only become available when forfeited or handed back by an airline, which most go to great lengths to avoid.
Other airlines that were unsuccessful in applying for slots include Air Baltic, Alitalia Cityliner, Blue Air, Brussels Airlines, Eastern Airways, Loganair, WestJet and Widereo. Unsurprisingly, Norwegian did not apply for any slots at London Heathrow this summer. Only Shenzhen Airlines managed to secure a mere 4 weekly slots.
That does not mean that any of these airlines won’t serve Heathrow this summer. Blue Air will fly from London Heathrow to Bucharest from 1 December 2020 and Cluj-Napoca from 1 March 2021.
