Rome Archives – London Air Travel

BA promises expansion at London City beginning with Rome

British Airways is promising a major expansion at London City airport with a new six times weekly route to Rome and 4 additional Embraer aircraft in 2019.

London Air Travel » Rome

BA CityFlyer Embraer at London City Airport

British Airways has today, Wednesday 29 August 2018, signalled a commitment to a significant expansion at London City.

It is to launch a new route from London City to Rome from Sunday 11 November 2018. Flights will operate six times weekly with Embraer E190 aircraft.

The airline is to also acquire an additional four Embraer E190 aircraft in 2019. This will increase the number of aircraft based at the airport from 22 to 26. It is presumed that these aircraft will either be leased or acquired second hand as BA had allowed options for new aircraft from Embraer to expire.

This news comes just one day after CityJet announced it is withdrawing scheduled flights from the airport and is handing over its route to Dublin to Aer Lingus.

In terms of possible new routes, BA has previously suspended a number of routes at London City. These include Alicante, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Hamburg and Madrid. LOT is also due to launch Budapest and Warsaw in early 2019. TAP has also recently launched Lisbon and Porto.

As London City is closed for part of the weekend, it is likely these these new aircraft will also be used to launch new winter and summer seasonal routes from Stansted and other UK regional airports at weekends.

Full details of BA’s current route network at London City are available at ba.com
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Alitalia – London Heathrow & City cancellations due to strike action

London Air Travel » Rome

A number of trade unions representing employees of Alitalia are due to take industrial action on Thursday 23 February 2017.

As a consequence, approximately 60% of Alitalia’s domestic and international flights are cancelled on Thursday 23 February and there are further cancellations Friday 24 February.

These include the following flights between London Heathrow and London City Airports and Milan and Rome.

Please note that these are pre-planned cancellations. There may well be additional cancellations due to severe weather in the U.K. caused by Storm Doris. In addition, some airport ground facilities in Italy may also be affected by industrial action.
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Etihad To Acquire Five Heathrow Slot From Alitalia

As part of Etihad’s acquisition of a 49% stake in Alitalia, it will also acquire five London Heathrow airport slot pairs and lease these back to Alitalia.

London Air Travel » Rome

After a long period of negotiation, Etihad has finally announced a deal to acquire a 49% stake (the maximum allowed under EU ownership rules) in troubled European airline Alitalia.

Full details of the transaction can be viewed here.

BA launches “day tripper” weekend tickets from London Heathrow

London Air Travel » Rome

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.

Flights are on sale now at ba.com

BA confirms changes to Heathrow short-haul timetable for Winter 2013

London Air Travel » Rome

London Heathrow Terminal 5 (Image Credit: British Airways)

British Airways has confirmed changes to its London Heathrow short-haul timetable for the Winter 2013 season, which starts at the end of October.

The changes are relatively modest and mainly concern small increases and decreases in frequencies on certain routes.

Frequency Increases

– Agadir increases from two flights a week to three.

– Basel increases from 21 to 26 flights a week.

– Amsterdam, Athens, Hamburg and Nice also benefit from small increases of 1-2 flights a week.

Frequency Decreases

– Flights to Manchester reduce from 72 to 68 a week.

– Prague also reduces by five flights from 33 to 28 flights a week.

– Aberdeen, Barcelona, Budapest, Dusseldorf, Edinburgh, Frankfurt, Paris Charles de Gualle, Rome, Stockholm and Zurich also reduce by 1-3 flights a week.

The daily flight to Larnaca also reverts back from a night-time departure to a day-time departure from London Heathrow, with the flight from Heathrow leaving at 12:05 and returning to Heathrow at 19:40.

There are also timetable changes to Rotterdam with BA’s three daily flights moved to earlier times. There are also relatively modest changes to timings for BA’s twice daily flights to Bergen and Stavanger.

Summer Seasonal Flights

BA’s weekly summer Saturday flights from London Heathrow to Ibiza and Palma de Mallorca also finish on Saturday 26 October 2013. The airline will continue to fly all year round to Ibiza and Palma de Mallorca from London City airport.