British Airways drops flights to Calgary for the winter

Planespeaking says:

This isn’t just Calgary – yesterday, our Xmas flights to/from LGW-PFO were cancelled by BA as was the entire winter schedule although I have to admit I half expected it as they never used to serve PFO from Nov-Mar. That said, I really don’t think they’d have any issues filling the aircraft as it’s always full of people who’d prefer to fly BA compared to the chartered or low cost alternatives (and they seem able to fill 2 flights a day to LCA), so I guess they just need the aircraft. The text advising of the cancellation suggested waiting for BA to call me (hmm) or for me to call them. I went with the latter and spoke with a very nice chap who said he could see we were Gold and booked into J so the first course of action would be to wait to be contacted by BA whilst they arranged an exact alternative to PFO, whether Qatar Airways or Cyprus Airways and of course, in Club. This raised alarm bells as neither carrier serves PFO and in fact, there are no J seats to PFO on any other carrier direct from the UK so I just asked to be switched to one of the 2 daily LCA flights and was met with “certainly sir” and all was sorted within minutes and at no additional cost, despite LCA now being way more expensive than we’d paid for PFO. I’d already checked car hire rates and my chosen company was the same cost at LCA as from PFO so I haven’t really lost out, other than the inconvenience of a 90 minute drive at either end and paying for the additional fuel used for each trip but I’m not going to ask for compensation as these are minor inconveniences. Admittedly, I do like the F lounge in LGW South but I also like the F lounge in T5 and the LCA Club lounge is streets ahead of PFO. I also prefer the 320 fleet out of LHR and even taking the drive time into account, I find the LCA flight times more convenient (and more reliable) than LGW. So, everything resolved with the minimum of fuss and I don’t have anything to complain about really, other than it would have been nice if BA had pro-actively contacted me to discuss or their operator had a little more knowledge of more credible alternatives. All thanks to Rob and sites such as this and FT for keeping us in the know but a shame for others who will be affected by similar cancellations and with less awareness (or availability) of suitable alternatives.