Not so long ago, British Airways painted a picture that they may leave Gatwick for a long time with its return uncertain. At the time I said I did not believe rumours that it would not return to Gatwick. Partly because their staffing reductions still showed a substantial number of Gatwick staff. Also as Gatwick is an important base for them to be able to compete in the leisure market against low-cost carriers like easyJet and Norwegian. Fees at Gatwick can be up to a third cheaper than Heathrow making it a more cost-effective choice for leisure flights.
British Airways have now confirmed that they will continue to move flights from Gatwick to Heathrow for a further two weeks or more until at least 15 July. Given the government’s introduction of a 14-day quarantine until at least 29 June, I’m not surprised that they have announced a further two weeks of flights departing from Heathrow in the meantime.
Flights that have been moved to Heathrow are:
BA has also announced some changes in frequency and restart dates from Heathrow for July, no doubt due to the UK quarantine. Hopefully, if the UK introduces air bridges in time, I would expect to see the return of routes to Gatwick from mid-July. So far BA has only said that there will be no flights from Gatwick before 15 July. Flights moving to Heathrow will be at a similar time to their original departure and keep the same flight number.
New York JFK will reduce to 1 per day in July from Heathrow.
More services have had their start date delayed:
- Until at least 16 July
- Dallas
- Seattle
- Accra
- Nairobi
- Lagos
- Bombay
- Delhi
- Dubai
- Tel Aviv
- Until 18 July
- Shanghai
- Until at least 1 August
- Mexico City
- Johannesburg
- Cape Town
- Atlanta
- Beijing (although with the current situation there it could be longer)
- São Paulo
1 comment
I’ll be pleased if it’s actually BA operating from Gatwick.
I can’t be the only one who’s struggling to decipher all the information we’re bombarded with, and was concerned that IAG may have been able to transfer/sell slots between their airlines and effectively close the BA operation at Gatwick, using Vueling & Level instead.
The fact that a lot of the communications we’ve been seeing have been coming from the CEO of IAG, instead of the CEO of BA, add to that confusion. Hopefully these concerns about IAG’s intentions are being addressed by the government.
If Vueling or Level took over BA flights out of Gatwick there would be a dramatic reduction in the availability of Reward Flights, and Avios & Tier Point earning opportunities to a wide range of destinations.
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