British Airways & Airportr Partnership (Image Credit: British Airways)
British Airways has, for many years, partnered with the luggage collection service Airportr.
Airportr offers passengers the option to have their luggage collected from their home, office or hotel at pre-arranged time up to 24 hours before departure.
Luggage is then checked-in with BA on their behalf. This leaves passengers free to travel to the airport without their luggage in tow and to collect their bags at their final destination.
British Airways Speedbird Logo (Image Credit: British Airways)
The British Airways lounge in Geneva airport will close for refurbishment on Tuesday 28 May 2019.
A new lounge will open later this year. In the interim, eligible passengers namely those travelling in Club Europe or Silver and Gold members of the Executive Club, will be able to use the Skyview Lounge. This is a third party lounge operated by dnata.
This lounge is located near to the existing BA lounge on the mezzanine level in the departures area. Passengers should turn right at the top of the escalator, and the Skyview Lounge is on the left hand side. Pictures of this lounge are on the Oneworld website.
Although no details have been given about the new BA lounge, it is likely to be in a similar format to recently refurbished lounges in Aberdeen and Rome.
The existing lounge in Geneva is largely based on the “Terraces” format which dates to the 1990s with shades of the “Galleries” format introduced ten years ago.
In terms of other BA lounge refurbishments this year, the new Club lounge at New York JFK Terminal 7 is due to open this year. The BA lounge in San Francisco is currently closed for refurbishment and will reopen in the summer. BA is also due to refurbish its lounges in Johannesburg this year. In the medium to longer term, other lounges earmarked for refurbishment include Chicago, Heathrow, Manchester and Miami.
Update Saturday 1 June 2019: The lounge refurbishment has been postponed. A confirmed closure date will be updated shortly.
Update Sunday 9 June 2019: The lounge will close for refurbishment on Monday 10 June 2019 and will reopen in late 2019.
BA CityFlyer Embraer at London City AirportAnother week, another London City route suspension!
After announcing the cancellation of Alicante & Madrid and Angers & Hamburg, BA is to also suspend its London City – Geneva route for the summer season from mid June to mid September 2017.
The last flights operate on Friday 16 June 2017 and resume on Monday 11 September 2017.
The affected flight numbers are BA2280, BA2281, BA2284, BA2285, BA 2286 and BA2287.
Affected passengers will have the option of a refund or being accommodated on a BA flight to Geneva from London Heathrow, which operates up to eight times daily. Passengers should contact either BA or their travel agent.
Swiss will continue to fly London City – Geneva year round up to three times daily.
Note: An earlier version of this article stated that the route suspension was for the entire summer season (late March to late October). This was incorrect as we had erroneously inferred that a summer suspension was for the whole of the summer timetable.
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.
BA Airbus A319 aircraft at London Heathrow (Image Credit: British Airways)
British Airways continues to battle to regain lost market share in the European short-haul market from easyJet.
The airline has today, 5 March 2014, announced a new fare enabling passengers to do “out and back in a day” trips to a number of short-haul destinations in the UK and mainland Europe on Saturdays and Sundays.
The lead-in return fares are £79 to Dublin and Geneva, £89 for Edinburgh and Rome and £99 for Vienna and Munich. These fares are available for booking now and we note that relatively short notice weekend fares for these destinations are significantly cheaper than others.
BA claim that these fares may be extended to other short-haul destinations in due course. We infer these fares are something of an experiment to help fill otherwise relatively quiet early morning and late night flights on weekends.
That said, this is a welcome innovation and certainly something we can see ourselves taking advantage of.
If the experience of “Hand Baggage Only” fares is anything to by, it should be extended across the network very quickly.