Florence Archives – London Air Travel

British Airways scales back at London Stansted

British Airways is cancelling some seasonal weekend routes from London Stansted and reducing frequencies on others.

London Stansted (Image Credit: British Airways)

For the past three summers, British Airways’ subsidiary BA CityFlyer has run seasonal weekend routes from London Stansted.

The reason for this is that London City is closed for part of the weekend. Instead of leaving its fleet of Embraer aircraft sit idle, some are positioned to Stansted airport.

Routes from Birmingham, Bristol and Manchester soon followed. However, there are now signs that BA CityFlyer is scaling back its ambitions.

All routes from Birmingham and Bristol have been suspended for next summer. BA CityFlyer has also scaled back its ambitions at Stansted. Some routes have been cancelled. Others have been cut in frequency. There are similar changes at Manchester.

Here’s a quick precis of known changes as at Sunday 21 October 2018. Further changes may be announced in the coming months.
Continue reading “British Airways scales back at London Stansted”

CityJet suspends London City – Antwerp & Florence

CityJet has suspended its routes from London City to Antwerp and Florence from Friday 27 October 2017.

London Air Travel » Florence

CityJet has once again reduced further its presence at London City Airport. The airline has suspended its routes from the airport to Antwerp and Florence from Friday 27 October 2017.

This comes on top of suspensions to Nantes and Paris Orly as well as Rotterdam. CityJet will continue to fly to Dublin. It will also fly to Amsterdam in conjunction with KLM, leaving just two regular routes. Its summer seasonal routes to Avignon and Toulon are not currently showing as available for booking in 2018.

CityJet was the only airline to fly between London and Antwerp. Florence is well served by year round flights by BA from London City and summer seasonal from Stansted. Its IAG sibling Vueling also flies to Florence year round from London Gatwick and Luton.

Affected CityJet passengers with bookings after 27 October 2017 on these cancelled routes should contact either CityJet or their travel agent.

Update January 2018

London City – Florence is scheduled to resume daily from Sunday 25 March 2018 to Saturday 27 October 2018.

BA launches seasonal routes from Stansted to Florence, Geneva & Nice

BA will expand its summer seasonal weekend route network from London Stansted to Florence, Geneva and Nice.

London Air Travel » Florence

Last year British Airways launched a series of summer seasonal weekend routes from London Stansted to Faro, Ibiza, Malaga and Palma. That was considered a success. This summer BA will continue to fly to Faro, Ibiza, Malaga and Palma as well as launching new routes to Florence, Geneva and Nice between early May and late October.

BA will fly to Florence twice a week from Saturday 20 May 2017 to Saturday 28 October 2017. It will fly to Geneva once a week from Friday 19 May to Saturday 28 October 2017. It will fly to Nice once a week from Saturday 20 May 2017 to Saturday 8 October 2017.

Flights will be operated with Embraer aircraft with a two class, Club Europe business class and EuroTraveller economy, service.

As BA also flies to these destinations from some, or all of, London Heathrow, Gatwick and City airports. As such, it should be possible to “mix and match” flights between different London airports if that is more convenient.

Flights are on sale now at ba.com
Continue reading “BA launches seasonal routes from Stansted to Florence, Geneva & Nice”

BA turns up the pressure on CityJet at London City

London Air Travel » Florence

BA Embraer E170 London City Airport (Image Credit: British Airways)

British Airways has often been criticised in the past for failing to prove it can compete with rival airlines outside its base at London Heathrow, where it now commands nearly 50% of take off and landing slots. Witness how the airline withdrew entirely from regional point to point operations five years ago and, as reported yesterday, has ceded a significant share of traffic at London Gatwick to easyJet.

The one exception to this is at London City. Some five years ago CityJet, an airline with a complex history and structure, but now under the ownership of Air France KLM, dominated short-haul operations at the airport, with more than twice the share of take off and landing slots as British Airways.

Continue reading “BA turns up the pressure on CityJet at London City”