In a slightly left field move, British Airways has announced the launch of two new ‘Summer sun’ routes from London City Airport.
From June 29th until September 6th, British Airways will be offering:
four flights per week to Mykonos
two flights per week to Santorini
As these are City routes, they will be operated by BA CityFlyer using its fleet of Embraer planes. I’m not sure how comfortable these will be for a four hour flight, to be honest.
The existing services from Heathrow to Mykonos and Santorini appear to be continuing.
Cash and redemption seats are already available at ba.com although I could not find any Club Europe availability, only EuroTraveller.
That said, as there is no lounge at London City, the legroom is the same in all seats and there is no ’empty middle seat’ benefit (Embraer seating is 2×2) you don’t miss much if you are down the back!
(Want to earn more Avios? Click here to see our latest articles on earning and spending your points and click here to see our list of current Avios promotions.)
About Head for Points
They were just about bareable for the hop to AMS !
No availability JMK-LON August ;(
That pic is not an Embraer! The leg room is better than the airbus fleet with the new seating and the seats are wider than the airbus fleet. CE is a waste of time from City and coming into city your exit from both the front and back.
By using a pic of a nasty old BAe146 – Raffles could be accused to trying to put people off flying these routes !!
I found the Embraers very comfortable and indeed more so than other short haul types BA operate. Agree that CE not worth it on this route.
If it’s an E190 and you grab the emergency exit then this is a great plane to be on. The seat recline is ok and I would probably say that the seats are more comfortable than the new recaros on mainline. I am pretty sure the pitch is around 34″ as well, certainly more leg room than normal, this was to allow 2 cabin crew and not 3. BA has 90 seats on board, Flybe has 118 on the same aircraft, with no seat recline!
I’ve given up with CE anyway – the enhanced legroom was the final straw for me – so these new LCY routes look ideal.
How much comfort do we need for what is essentially a short haul flight? We flew to Santorini on Easyjet earlier in the year, packed our own sarnies, popped some movies on the tablet and we were there before we knew it. We did pay for exit row seats such have great leg room, the seats don’t recline (all carriers on short haul routes should be forced to eliminate seat recline) and oc the purchase of these seats gets you speedy boarding too. More interesting for me is the availability of rsf.
I wonder how much luggage will get left behind on hot summer days?
Agreed that the smaller 170EMBs are tight, but the larger aircraft have the best Y product in the BA fleet’ with comfortable 2+2 seating and 34″ pitch. There is little benefit to flying club tho.
I’ve done 3hrs on the Embraer with BA from Edinburgh on a Barrhead Travel charter and they are fine and can cope with a full hold of luggage coming off the short runway at Edinburgh so it shouldn’t a problem from LCY.
After the mainline changes they are without a doubt the best Y seating in the BA
Edinburgh airport’s runway is nearly twice as long as LCY.
(8,000 ft / 4’900 ft)
Thanks for the heads up. Is there any reason why there is no avios availability for the whole summer? Is it just not being released? I think it’s the same for the santorini route from heathrow as well.
Had a great flight AGP-LCY last easter, but it was only half full (if that) and we had exit seats.
Give me an Embraer from LCY over economy from LGW or LHR anyday. Seats more comfortable, more leg room, 2 seats per row rather than 3. And food that is more like an old style meal rather than a cold wrap.
I’m going to join the chorus in favour of the E-jets. The seats are far more comfortable than the new LCC-style seats on the mainline short haul fleet. There may be no lounge at LYC, but you don’t need one given how little time you spend at the terminal there compared with the larger airports.
In short, this is great news!
Not sure about the plane, but the shorter queues at City and overall better airport experience than LGW / LHR swing it for me. No brainer really…
I must admit, this is completely at odds with my experience.
In the summer we did LCY to MAH. I thought it would be a refreshing change.
Plane was fine – airport was a shambles – just don’t think it is geared up to holiday traffic (didn’t help that I forgot I could check-in at the Club desk with my Marco Polo Gold !). Queues virtually out the door and once through security absolutely nowhere to sit down as it was so packed.
This was also a weekday morning
Flew back from Palma last night on BA Embraer 190SR to London City.
My absolute favourite aircraft to fly on in Europe.
In Y, more leg room than Club Europe into LHR two weeks previously.
Strange how two people can have a completely different experience of the exact same thing. Can never decide if it is down to different expectations or the service and hard product being different on different days.
Flew LCY to MAH at the end of August and thought it was fine. Highlight of the return journey was from disembarking to being in the cab, 25 mins. The airport was busy, but then so are a lot of others in the school summer holidays. Guess it depends on how much you value the ‘lounge experience’ – we can take it or leave it.