British Airways launches new routes from Gatwick, cuts back Maldives and Buenos Aires

British Airways released a flurry of route announcements last week.  These things tend to come out in bursts, since every route cancellation will eventually be matched by a new route or capacity addition.

Here is a summary of the announcements.  All of these changes will commence from the week of March 29th.  Seats can be booked now at ba.com.

Short-haul

Seville (from Gatwick).  This will run 5 days per week all year round.  This is a great place to visit if you have never been.  It is officially the ‘hottest major Metropolitan area’ in Europe!

Las Palmas (from Gatwick).  This will run 2 days per week all year round.

Funchal (from Gatwick).  This will run 3 days per week all year round.

BA has already announced the launch of Cagliari, Crete, Rhodes, Bodrum and Dalaman for next Summer.

Long-haul

Colombo to be dropped.  This is currently an add-on to the Maldives service.  This was on the cards since SriLankan joined the oneworld alliance – they offer a direct service to Colombo with no need to stop in Male on the way, and you still earn Avios and tier points.

Maldives to become ‘Winter only’.  This is a bit of a surprise since I assume there is a decent volume of premium business on this route, even in Summer.  They won’t be selling many fully-flexible tickets but I would have expected it to out-yield plenty of other routes.  Flights will end on 29th March and not resume until October.

Antigua to be increased to a daily service from 5 per week

Orlando to be increased from 13 to 14 departures per week

Port of Spain to be increased from 5 to 6 departures per week

Grenada, Kingston, Las Vegas and Mauritius will see changes to flight times

Buenos Aires (served from Heathrow, all of the above changes are from Gatwick) is to be reduced to five flights per week from the current seven.

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (September 2023)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points.

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital On Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus.

EDIT: Applications for this card are temporarily suspended due to IT issues with the British Airways On Business SME loyalty scheme.

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.