Virgin Atlantic has suspended its daily service from London Heathrow to Shanghai Pu Dong airport.
This follows a decision by a large number of European airlines to either suspend outright, or substantially reduce, scheduled services to airports in mainland China following the Coronavirus outbreak.
The World Health Organisation has also declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.
The last outbound flight from London Heathrow, VS250, will operate on Friday 31 January 2020. The last inbound flight, VS251, will operate on Saturday 1 February 2020.
Virgin Atlantic currently plans to resume its outbound flight from London Heathrow on Monday 17 February 2020 and its inbound flight to London Heathrow on Tuesday 18 February 2020. However, this is subject to review.
Passengers whose flights have been cancelled are entitled to a full refund, or to rebook to a later date.
Virgin Atlantic will continue to fly daily from London Heathrow to Hong Kong. Passengers who are due to fly to Hong Kong can also request a refund or rebook to a later date.
Beijing Daxing International Airport (Image Credit: British Airways)
British Airways has suspended all flights from London Heathrow airport to mainland China.
This follows UK Government advice against all but essential travel to mainland China in light of the Coronavirus outbreak.
BA has suspended its daily service to Beijing Daxing International airport (flights BA39/BA38) and Shanghai Pu Dong International airport (flights BA169/BA168).
BA currently plans to resume flights from London Heathrow to Shanghai on Saturday 18 April 2019.
Flights will initially operate three times weekly, from Heathrow on Monday, Thursday and Saturday until Sunday 31 May 2020. The return operates to Heathrow on the next day.
BA also plans to resume flights from London Heathrow to Beijing Daxing on Sunday 19 April 2019. Flights will initially operate four times weekly, from Heathrow on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday until 31 May 2020. The return operates to Heathrow on the next day.
Passengers whose flights have been cancelled are entitled to a refund, or to rebook to a later date.
BA is also re-accommodating passengers on its alliance and codeshare partners such as Finnair, China Southern Airlines and Qatar Airways. However, it should be noted that Finnair has substantially reduced its flights to China.
Hong Kong
BA will continue to flyto Hong Kong once daily up to Monday 1 June.
Passengers due to travel to Hong Kong up to Sunday 31 May 2020 can either rebook to a later date or obtain a full refund.
However, if you are due to transit through Hong Kong to an international destination, such as in Australia, you cannot re-route via another hub, such as Singapore.
Passengers who are originally booked to travel to/from mainland China can also rebook to/from Hong Kong. However, any consequential costs will be at passengers’ expense.
However, for passengers intending to travel on to mainland China, BA’s Oneworld alliance and codeshare partner Cathay Pacific has also significantly reduced flights to mainland China by in excess of 50%.
Cathay Pacific has also advised that the in-flight service on flights between Hong Kong and mainland China will be temporarily modified with a truncated meal service in all classes. Amenities such as hot towels and blankets will also not be offered.
Given the fluid nature of the situation, the scope and length of cancellations may be extended.
Passengers can check the status of their booking using the Manage My Booking tool on ba.com and should contact BA or their travel agent.
British Airways Airbus A380 Heathrow (Image Credit: Heathrow)
Hello and welcome to London Air Travel’s Atlantic Update providing a weekly bulletin on developments on transatlantic travel between Europe and North America. The Atlantic Update is published every Wednesday morning at 06:00 GMT.
BA Delays Boeing 787-10 Launch To Atlanta
In late 2019, BA announced that it would take delivery of the first of 12 Boeing 787-10 in January 2020, with the first route being London Heathrow – Atlanta in February 2020.
The new Boeing 787-10 aircraft does of course feature BA’s new Club Suite long-haul business class cabin. The entry of the aircraft into service appears to have been delayed. Online seat maps currently indicate that the Boeing 787-10 will now operate London Heathrow – Atlanta from Tuesday 10 March 2020. However, this may be subject to change at short notice.
BA Deploys The Airbus A380 To Las Vegas
As was announced last week, BA will fly its Airbus A380 aircraft from London Heathrow to Las Vegas for the first time in January 2021.
This is to coincide with the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Schedules currently indicate that A380 will operate the route (flights BA275/BA274) from Saturday 2 January 2021 to Sunday 10 January 2021.
Andy Byford Resigns
Andy Byford has resigned as President of New York City Transit.
Andy was recruited to turn around New York’s rapidly deteriorating Subway system which has long been caught between the dysfunctional management of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and New York City & State politics.
Even though Andy was recruited by the Governor of New York State Andrew Cuomo, the two figures have clashed with the Governor reportedly bristled by Andy receiving public plaudits for having started to turn around the Subway’s performance. The breaking point appears to have been a reduced role for Andy.
News of the resignation was first reported by Politico and Gothamist looks at why this is bad news for New York.
South African Airways Airbus A340 Aircraft (Image Credit: South African Airways)
Hello and welcome to the London Air Travel’s Monday Briefing for the week beginning 27 January 2020.
News over the past week has of course been dominated by the Coronavirus outbreak in China. As of Sunday 26 January 2020, BA has updated its guidance for passengers. Any passenger due to fly with BA to any destination in mainland China or Hong Kong up to Sunday 23 February 2020 can change to an alternative date or obtain a refund.
Update: Virgin Atlantic has announced that passengers due to fly with the airline and its codeshare partners to mainland China and Hong Kong up to Saturday 29 February 2020 can rebook up to Tuesday 31 March 2020, or seek a refund.
Cathay Pacific has also announced that Cathay Dragon has suspended all flights from Hong Kong to Wuhan until Tuesday 31 March 2020. Cathay Pacific also has a flexible rebooking policy in place for all passengers due to travel to any of its destinations in mainland China.
The latest guidance from the UK Government is available here. The World Heath Organization also has guidance for international travellers.
South African Airways
Last week South African Airways was forced to deny speculation that it was on the cusp of suspending operations.
The airline has however undertaken tactical cancellations of selected domestic flights from its Johannesburg hub to Cape Town and Durban, as well as Johannesburg – Munich, to conserve cash.
The South African Broadcasting Corporation reports that the airline has sufficient cash to pay its January salaries to staff. The running of the airline is being overseen by a Business Rescue practitioner and it is awaiting funding of R 2 billion. There has been no update from either the National Treasury or Department Of Public Enterprises in South Africa.
Flybe
The Financial Times reported on Friday evening that Flybe is seeking a Government loan of £100m which would be on “commercial terms”.
As a condition of this, Flybe’s owners have promised to inject a further £20m into the airline, in addition to £30m it has already promised. The Sunday Telegraph also reports that Flybe is in negotiations with UK regional airports over unpaid landing fees, many of whom are effectively dependent on Flybe for survival.
Update:Sky News reports that the UK Government has appointed Alvarez & Marsal to advise on the loan to Flybe. The Financial Times also reports that a potential loan is complicated by the fact that Flybe has no unencumbered assets to provide as collateral.
Separately, Flybe’s franchise partner Eastern Airways has announced a tranche of new routes from Teeside International airport. This includes a new route to London City airport from Tuesday 27 April 2020. However, the exact schedule has not yet been confirmed and flights are not yet on sale.
Flybe will also transfer its route from London Heathrow to Guernsey to London Southend airport from Sunday 29 March 2020.
Virgin Atlantic aircraft taking off at London Heathrow (Image Credit: Heathrow)
Virgin Atlantic is ending its partnership with Air China.
Currently members of the Virgin Atlantic Flying Club can earn miles when flying on Air China, as well as redeem miles on Air China flights.
This will end from Monday 16 March 2020. Virgin Atlantic Flying Club members who have made redemption bookings on Air China up to 16 March 2020 will still have their bookings honoured.
Flying Club members will also be able to make retrospective mileage claims in respect of flights taken on Air China before 16 March 2020 up to six months after the date of travel.
Virgin Atlantic also codeshares on Air China’s flights from London Heathrow to Beijing as well as on local routes from Shanghai. The Virgin Atlantic website currently indicates that these will also end from 16 March 2020.
Manhattan at Sunrise (Image Credit: London Air Travel)
Hello and welcome to London Air Travel’s Atlantic Update providing a weekly bulletin on developments on transatlantic travel between Europe and North America. The Atlantic Update is published every Wednesday morning at 06:00 GMT.
CMA Investigation Into AA/BA Joint Business
There is something that was been underway for quite some time. It may prove to be insignificant. It could otherwise prove to be seismic.
More than 10 years ago, the European Commission gave regulatory approval for AA and BA (as well as Finnair and Iberia) to have anti-trust immunity to operate their transatlantic joint business. As a condition of this, AA and BA had to make certain commitments slots available to willing entrants on certain overlapping routes between the two airlines. These included a number of routes from London to Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Miami and New York.
In October 2018, the UK regulator, the Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) announced it was opening a review of the joint business pending the expiry of the above commitments and the UK’s imminent departure from the European Union.
Who knows what exactly is going on behind the scenes, but the review is taking considerably longer than expected. Last week, the CMA announced it has added Aer Lingus, which is currently seeking approval from the US Department of Transportation to be added to the joint business, to the scope of its review.
AA and BA will be able to say with some considerable justification that joint business has helped BA launch many new transatlantic routes from London Heathrow, where additional sales from AA’s local customer base can be vital to making thinner routes profitable. Nor could either airlines be accused of reducing capacity on over-lapping routes.
However, it will certainly be the case that there will have been intense lobbying by JetBlue to secure new remedy slots at London Heathrow. Norwegian has also sought to secure slots at Heathrow. Airlines using regulatory reviews to secure Heathrow slots for free isn’t new. However, it also the case from the CMA’s work in other industries that it is prepared to flex its muscles and will take whatever time it sees fit.
Meanwhile, the AA and BA joint business continues to operate as normal, but both airlines will be awaiting the CMA’s findings with interest.
Hello and welcome to the London Air Travel’s Monday Briefing for the week beginning 20 January 2020.
Flybe
The news over the past week has of course been dominated by the financial difficulties of Flybe.
Who knows what will be the ultimate fate of the airline, but it can be said with confidence that this story will run and run. It could well end with some high profile figures appearing before a Transport Select Committee hearing.
There are a lot of multi-faceted aspects as to how Flybe got here. There are also a lot of vested interests in its ultimate fate.
It’s worth recalling that the original sale of Flybe to the Connect Airways Consortium comprising Cyrus Capital Partners, Stobart Air and Virgin Atlantic was highly controversial. The need for approval from Flybe’s public shareholders was circumvented by structuring the sale of the airline as a sale of its assets, thus wiping out any remaining shareholder value. When Flybe floated on the stock exchange in 2010, it was valued at some £250m. The urgency of the sale was seen as critical to securing the airline’s future.
Flybe has now secured what is known as a “Time To Pay” arrangement with the UK’s tax authority HM Revenue & Customs in respect of an outstanding liability of Air Passenger Duty of approximately £10m. This is a common arrangement used by businesses in financial distress.
The Government has also promised to look at the levying of Air Passenger Duty on domestic flights. Airlines have spent years lobbying against Air Passenger Duty to no avail. The Treasury, which is no stranger to complaints and lobbying from industry groups, will at best come up with a fudge that is revenue neutral.
Flybe is also in discussions with the UK Government about securing a short-term loan on commercial terms.
Flybe’s rivals are furious. IAG, whose slots are being used by Flybe at London Heathrow, has submitted a complaint to the European Union alleging that Flybe is in receipt of state aid. Should Flybe be seen to receive any special treatment from the UK Government, its rivals could well also seek a judicial review.
They can argue, with some justification, that Flybe’s financial problems were well documented before its current owners bought the airline. The Connect Airways consortium had ample opportunity to do a full due diligence.
Virgin has an uncanny ability to keep its head down when trouble is brewing. However, assuming the rebranding to Virgin Connect ultimately goes ahead, it will not be able to avoid scrutiny.
Managing an airline with multiple shareholders is hard enough. With its shareholders having different interests – Virgin wants Flybe to feed its operations at Heathrow and Manchester and Stobart Air wants it to grow Southend airport (which it owns) – turning around Flybe is not going to be easy.
Royal Air Maroc will become a full member of the Oneworld alliance from Wednesday 1 April 2020.
Its regional subsidiary Royal Air Maroc Express will also join as a Oneworld affiliate member.
This means that from this date passengers of Oneworld frequent flyer programmes will be entitled to full frequent flyer programme recognition when flying on Royal Air Maroc. This includes additional baggage allowances, access to priority check-in facilities, departure lounges, priority boarding and earning of Avios/miles and tier points/status credits.
Royal Air Maroc currently flies from London Heathrow Terminal 4 and London Gatwick North Terminal to Casablanca. Both of these routes are served with Boeing 737 aircraft.
The addition of Royal Air Maroc does substantially improve Oneworld’s coverage of Africa where it is relatively weak to compared to SkyTeam and Star Alliance.
From Casablanca, Royal Air Maroc does offer connections to a number of destinations in Morocco such as Agadir and Tangier, and destinations in West Africa such as Luanda. Full details of Royal Air Maroc’s network can be seen here.
Royal Air Maroc has announced co-operation through codesharing with some Oneworld alliance members such as American Airlines.
There is obvious scope for co-operation between BA and Royal Air Maroc to improve BA’s coverage of Africa. However, this is unlikely to happen without BA serving Casablanca with its own aircraft, which it doesn’t at the moment.
New York Skyline (Image Credit: London Air Travel)
Hello and welcome to London Air Travel’s Atlantic Update providing a weekly bulletin on developments on transatlantic travel between Europe and North America. The Atlantic Update is published every Wednesday morning at 06:00 GMT.
The Talk Of The Town
American Airlines and BA have provided a little more detail on their plans to co-locate at New York JFK Terminal 8 from 2022.
Terminal 8 is of course well established and houses not only American Airlines but also Oneworld alliance partners Cathay Pacific and Qantas. In order to accommodate BA’s move into the terminal, an additional 70,000 square feet of space will be added. As will five wide body gates and four remote stands capable of handling wide body aircraft.
Given BA can have up to 8 departures from New York JFK in the space of five hours in the evening, there will be some concern that some passengers may have to use remote standards, which would not be fitting for a “blue riband” route.
There’s been much less news on American and BA’s plans for London Heathrow. There was a very vague release some time ago about “big plans” for Terminal 3 which have so far come to nothing.
American has expressed a desire to co-locate with BA at Heathrow Terminal 5, which would make sense, particularly for a route like New York JFK where both airlines are at a disadvantage compared to Delta and Virgin Atlantic who share terminals at both London Heathrow and New York JFK. However, there are likely to be significant process and systems issues to be addressed before American can move into Terminal 5.
The plans for the broader redevelopment of New York JFK are of course a classically American approach to infrastructure investment: celebrating private investment whilst not being prepared to spend public money on underlying problems – namely access to New York JFK from Manhattan.
On that note, the idea of a direct link from Manhattan to La Guardia airport should be welcomed. However, the Governor of New York State Andrew Cuomo is pursuing a proposal, at a cost of some $2 billion, that would result in the majority of passengers from Manhattan passing by La Guardia and then backtracking to get to the airport. This is in spite of considerable protests. (Streets Blog)
Luis Gallego, Chief Executive Designate, International Airlines Group (Image Credit: Iberia)
Hello and welcome to the first Monday Briefing from London Air Travel for 2020.
Two weeks into the year, we’ve had a reminder that airlines are never far away from geopolitical events. A number of airlines are still financially vulnerable – late on Sunday evening Sky News reported that Flybe is in talks to secure additional financing. This year will also see a significant upheaval in the management of IAG.
IAG Prepares For Life After Willie Walsh
It has been known for some months that Willie Walsh was due to retire from IAG before October 2021.
IAG has since moved very quickly – there has been speculation in the Sunday papers as to why – to replace Willie Walsh as CEO. Last week, IAG announced that Luis Gallego will be CEO of the group from Thursday 26 March 2020.
Luis is currently CEO and Chairman of Iberia as well as Chairman of its low cost long-haul brand LEVEL. Luis has also previously been CEO of Iberia Express – long seen by Willie Walsh as a model of operational excellence.
There is no question that Luis will have a very different management style to Willie Walsh.
I’ll quote Oscar Wilde that whenever people agree with me, I always think I’m wrong, but the fact that they’re disagreeing with me means I’m right.
Willie Walsh, 2018
Memories about BA are often very short and very selective. It’s worth recalling that many commentators were convinced that a merger of BA and Iberia could not work. Ironically, one concern was that IAG would not be able to exert control over the two airlines, which has proved to be far from the case.
IAG can justifiably claim to have pursued cost & revenue synergies with considerably more vigour than Air France-KLM and Lufthansa and introduced genuinely new ideas.
There have certainly been some mis-steps. It wasn’t until that long ago that Willie Walsh was convinced that BA did not need to change its “yin-yang” layout in Club World. In reality, BA would have saved itself a lot of grief it had introduced an entirely long-haul business class new seat with the Airbus A380 and Boeing 787 in 2013. BA’s high profile IT failures point to a lack of investment which has since has been addressed with a higher profile for IAG’s Chief Information Officer.
It is also only until very recently that IAG appears to have taken a look at the relative positioning of its brands in the market. Talk of “stretching” the BA brand a few years ago has since been reversed.
Willie Walsh’s departure does seem premature. Having long been an advocate of “rational” behaviour and disciplined investment, he has almost relished the opportunity to prove IAG’s financial resilience during an industry crisis. That will now fall to Luis.
Luis Gallego will have no shortage of items on his to do list. The acquisition of Air Europa will inevitably be challenged by regulatory authorities. IAG will also need to decide how to rationalise its brands in Spain, which will number five. There is also the question of LEVEL, where its ambitious growth plans appear to have been put in hold.
There is also the question of how IAG’s structure will be compatible with the terms of an eventual UK-EU trade deal with many investors and journalists left unconvinced by IAG’s apparent lack of concern to date.
From a UK perspective, when relative weakness is that having not run BA, Luis Gallego is not known amongst UK Government ministers. IAG will have to lobby the UK Government on a number of matters, including the third runway at Heathrow and possibly the Competition & Markets Authority’s findings on its review of the transatlantic joint business with American Airlines.
A new CEO will undoubtedly lead to other management changes in a group that does like to move executives around and there has inevitably been speculation about Alex Cruz at BA.
