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Air New Zealand gets £20m for its London Heathrow landing and take-off slots

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Air New Zealand is ending services from the UK in October when it closes its Heathrow – Los Angeles – Auckland route.

Our article on the Air New Zealand UK closure is here.

Forbes is claiming that Air New Zealand received £20m (NZ$42m) for its daily take-off and landing slot.

Air New Zealand gets £20m for its London Heathrow slots

This may seem a lot, but it is well below the record $75m paid to Kenya Airways by Oman Air a couple of years ago.  The Air New Zealand price was hampered by the fact that the slots are not in the peak early morning period.

It is not clear which airline has bought the slots.

This trade acts as a stark reminder of why airlines will fly empty planes from Heathrow, for months if necessary, during coronavirus to ensure that their slots are retained.

The new ‘season’ starts in late March and a slot must be used on 80% of days during the following seven months (Winter starts in late October) if they are not to be forfeited.  The only way to circumvent this is by Government order.

Comments (69)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Shoestring says:

    Amex Dell offer: Save to Card to get a £100 statement credit on a transaction of £750 online at Dell by 01 September 2020.

    stacks with SAVE14 – 14% off – and/ or any other offers you can find

    works cumulatively

  • Dave says:

    watching that clip makes me leave fingernail marks in my armrests 😀

  • Josh says:

    OT but BITS

    I had booked some internal AA flights in America this summer and have just received an email telling me that they timings of these have changed, they all seem to have shifted by about 30 minutes.

    When I initially booked these my OH was BA silver so we were able to select the Main Cabin Extra seats for free but now she’s fallen to Bronze and they’re trying to charge $100+ each for each leg of the journey. Is there any easy way to resolve this or am I stuck having to call their CS?

    Thanks in advance

    • marcw says:

      There’s nothing you can do, unfortunately. As a Bronze, you can select Main Cabin Extra seats for free once on-line check in opens.

    • Lady London says:

      Call them and be nice.
      Success not guaranteed – even if it’s unfair. But give it a try.

      • AndyGWP says:

        Worth a go, but from my experience, you get a “computer says no” response :/

  • Aston100 says:

    BA Club Europe revenue ticket from CDG to LHR.
    Is this 40tp one way?
    I also have a dragonpass; what is the best lounge I can access in terminal 2? Is it still the Cathay?

    Thanks.

    • Rob says:

      Yes, still Cathay the best option and still 40TP.

    • Lady London says:

      Best by far.
      Get there before they have to close it in current problems. Good pods to work in and ok showers.

  • Chris says:

    Qantas also doing a lot of cancellations and grounding 8 of their a380’s. The London – Sydney route is not going be A380 via Singapore but become another 787 ‘non-stop’ service via Perth. Starts from April 20th and I’ve got a flight in May but it was one of those 100 promo flights so can’t really complain about no longer being on a nice empty A380…

    • ADS says:

      hadn’t heard about this. seems a strange move when they had such problems recently due to not being able to fly over Iran. there was talk about having to offload a pile of economy passengers in order to save fuel for the longer journey.

      • Boi says:

        We have KLM Toronto to ams next week. What sort of price can we get upgrade for? Is it worth negotiating once they offer something?
        On our way here we were offered 479/person and passed as it was a day flight (they mentioned there was 18 empty business seats)

    • Alex Sm says:

      That’s nice

  • James says:

    I notice looking ahead to book some domestic flights for May that prices are significantly higher than expected…instead of the expected £45 EDI-LHR, they are all around £100 each way. Is this a consequence of reduced capacity?

    • Rob says:

      BA put up Edinburgh prices sharply as soon as Flybe collapsed.

    • Lady London says:

      As flights are being identified that are likely to be cancelled you can expect prices on nearby flights to go up a lot short term.

      Reason is you’d only be travelling if you must, demand moved from other flights will push prices up and short term airlines will first try to recoup any overall losses on flights they are actually flying.

  • Ashan Ramakrishnan says:

    OT Amex SPG – they just called to say they will be upholding my complaint about the points applied. Be interesting to see how many goodwill points they provide.

  • Russ 😷 says:

    Wife just received this from BA:

    The promotion codes ECWELCOME3 and ECWELCOME4 are only available to [wife’s name] and are not transferable. No cash or credit alternative is available. You must be logged into your Executive Club account at ba.com to participate in this offer. 2.) Codes cannot be used retrospectively. These Codes apply to new bookings only, made within 30 days of receipt of this email [today]. The Code may only be used once. 3.) ECWELCOME3 entitles you to £5 off the total price of any short haul flight only booking including taxes, fees and carrier charges in GBP. A minimum spend of £50 must be met for this promotion code to work 4.) ECWELCOME4 entitles you to £50 off the total price of any long haul flight only booking including taxes, fees and carrier charges in GBP. A minimum spend of £300 must be met for this promotion code to work.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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