Yesterday’s (Monday) Financial Times featured an interesting story where the Chief Executive of London Gatwick, Stewart Wingate, postulated (known in politics and the press as “kite flying”) that if a second runway for Gatwick was approved, one of the “Big Three” airline alliances could be persuaded to defect from Heathrow airport.
Is there any mileage in this?
Put simply, I don’t think so.
Following the grant of anti-trust immunity by the US Department of Transportation, Virgin Atlantic and Delta have today confirmed they will co-ordinate their schedules to operate a nine times daily shuttle service on the London Heathrow – New York (Newark & JFK) route from 30 March 2014.
If you are a member of the British Airways Executive Club, you may notice a small, but significant, change when you next log on to your account at ba.com
BA has, in addition to annual tier points which determine the level of status (Bronze, Silver, Gold) a member is entitled to for their membership year, introduced “lifetime tier points”.
Put simply, these are all the tier points a member has earned since joining the Executive Club.
At the moment, if a member has earned 35,000 lifetime tier points or more they are now entitled to gold membership for life.
Last weekend, British Airways launched its first major UK TV advertising campaign in over a year with a return to the theme of “To Fly. To Serve.”
The advertisement, created by Bartle Bogle Hegarty, follows a single customer journey from the airport to on board a Boeing 787 aircraft. The advertisement, which is certainly very slick, uses a “micro to macro” style of filming, featuring close up shots of the details of flying, panning to wide shots of the aircraft in motion.
Quite a mixed picture for BA in Africa at the moment. Yesterday, BA announced that its route to Lusaka was being dropped and this followed the suspension of its route to Dar es Salaam earlier this year.
On a more positive note, BA is to increase flights to Accra from daily to 10 weekly from Sunday 27 October 2013. Furthermore, the daily flight will be upgaged from a Boeing 777 to a Boeing 747 from 30 March 2014. This is no doubt a competitive response to Virgin Atlantic withdrawing from this route.
London – Accra
Flight BA0081 Depart 14:50 Arrive 20:20 (Daily)
Flight BA0079 Depart 22:45 Arrive 05:00 (Sat, Mon, Wed)
Accra – London
Flight BA0080 Depart 06:55 Arrive 14:55 (Thu, Sun, Tue)
Flight BA0078 Depart 22:45 Arrive 06:20 (Daily)
Flights to Entebbe in Uganda also increase from three flights to four flights a week from 30 March 2014 and also benefit from being retimed.
Just under a year ago, as part of a reshuffle of flights between London Heathrow terminals as British Airways digested its acquisition of bmi, BA decided to move all of its flights to Tel Aviv from Terminal 5 to Terminal 1, with all flights operated by an Airbus A321 aircraft.
This proved to be unpopular with passengers for three main reasons:
1. The switch to Terminal 1 meant no access to BA’s Galleries Club and First lounges in Terminal 5 and a change in terminals for the majority of transfer passengers.
2. The switch from three/four class widebody aircraft to a two class (economy and business class) aircraft.
3. The change in aircraft meant that no premium economy product was available on this route and members of the British Airways Executive Club could not use frequent flyer miles (“Avios”) to upgrade to business class (Club World).
BA has now reversed this decision and from Sunday 30 March 2014 all flights to Tel Aviv will operate from Terminal 5. Flights will operate twice daily, with an Airbus A321 aircraft and a four class Boeing 777 aircraft.
It has not been confirmed whether any routes will move from Terminal 5 to 1 to accommodate the move.
Terminal 1 is due to close in Spring 2016, at which point it is expected that BA’s flights will be consolidated in Terminals 3 and 5.
British Airways has today announced that it is to suspend its thrice weekly route to Lusaka in Zambia from 25 October 2013.
The final flight (BA255) from London to Lusaka will operate on Friday, 25 October 2013, and the return flight from Lusaka to London (BA254) will operate on Saturday, 26 October 2013.
No reason has been given for the suspension of the route. However, it is a safe assumption that unsatisfactory commercial performance is the reason.
British Airways has provided rebooking guidelines which include re-routing options via other BA gateways in Africa. Additional options may be added in due course if BA can reach commercial terms with other airlines.
British Airways has today confirmed that it will launch a new direct route from London Heathrow to Austin, Texas from Monday 3 March 2014 (just in time for the SXSW festival!).
The route will initially operate five weekly (not Wednesday and Saturday) until 5 May 2014 when it will operate daily. The precise flight times depend on the day of operation until the flight goes daily.
Austin is one of the fastest growing populations in the United States. The announcement is significant in not only providing London with a direct route to Austin, but also this is the first new route to be launched that will be operated with the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
Although BA has made much of how the Boeing 787 Dreamliner will open up new routes to Asia, this announcement does demonstrate how much potential there is in BA’s traditionally strong transatlantic market.
The route announcement also follows a trend of BA launching new transatlantic routes to US cities where it is either the sole operator of the route to London Heathrow, and in some cases, Europe. This may provide some clues as to which new US cities will announced next.
Flights are now on sale on ba.com
Qantas published its annual results for the year ended 30 June 2013 last week. The airline posted a modest net profit of AUD$6 million after tax, which was a significant improvement over last year’s loss of AUD$206 million. This was primarily due a reduction in losses at Qantas’ International division, which prompted a significant reduction in capacity to Europe and the jettisoning of Qantas’ partnership with BA in favour of Emirates, by almost half to AUD$246 million.
Whilst the partnership between Emirates and Qantas is still very much in its infancy, it is curious that Qantas seems to have declined to give any clear revenue guidance on the partnership. In its results it gave only vague operational measures such as “2 times increase in codeshare bookings on EK network” and “3 times increase in EK bookings on Qantas Domestic network” compared to the partnership with British Airways and others. It is hard to draw any conclusions from such claims without seeing the detail behind the headlines.
Meanwhile, British Airways has remained upbeat on the performance of its last remaining Australian route, London-Singapore-Sydney.
Qatar Airways has today announced that members of its frequent flyer “Privilege Club” can earn frequent flyer miles when flying on British Airways from Monday 2 September.
Member of the Privilege Club will also be able to redeem their frequent flyer miles on British Airways flights from 1 October 2013.