Is British Airways permanently ending short-haul flights from Gatwick?

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• 1ATL says:

  9 Aug9 August 06:02

  Aer Lingus used to run a fleet base out of Gatwick 10-12yrs ago. They had a small fleet of A320’s operating to The Canaries, mainland Spain and Portugal as well to Dublin and Belfast. I flew them to Lanzarote and it was a a perfectly acceptable experience.

  • Roger* says:

    9 Aug9 August 08:18

    Yes, also to Zurich

• Richard M says:

  9 Aug9 August 06:05

  What goes around comes around. I suppose they could call it GO lol

• Nick_C says:

  9 Aug9 August 07:22

  How can the Aer Lingus brand make money where the BA brand cannot?

  And with the cuts in pay and conditions, are BA staff more expensive than EasyJet staff?

  • Jonathan says:

    9 Aug9 August 09:01

    Not just staff costs (although even with recent changes they’ll probably still have higher cost than EasyJet) but Avios redemptions & earning, lounges/free seat reservations/ enhanced luggage allowance for status passengers even on the cheap tickets.

    BA probably make no margin from a large proportion of the Sussex based Gold/Silvers downing a bottle of champagne in the lounge before their HBO flight to Malaga!

    • TokyoFan says:

      9 Aug9 August 10:50

      I’ve never flown to Malaga – but as a Hove BAEC Silver, I suspect their LGW operation made *very* little out of me with the bubbles and bacon baps in the lounge…

• Peter18k says:

  9 Aug9 August 07:26

  Oh how times have changed; only 15 years ago one of the largest, if not the largest BA connecting market over LGW was from/to Manchester. To think how many LGW based carriers BA has taken over (e.g. BCAL, Dan-Air, Cityflyer Express) and slots purchased (ex Monarch & Thomas Cook) to build up its LGW portfolio. Much BA short haul connectivity has already disappeared and it looks like more is to go.

• Kathy says:

  9 Aug9 August 07:40

  BA are taking bookings from Gatwick for summer 2021 to holiday destinations. I know that does not mean that they will fly.

  • Phil G says:

    9 Aug9 August 08:02

    BA are taking bookings to Australia for September even though Aus aren’t letting anyone in

    • Roger* says:

      9 Aug9 August 08:25

      Ditto for flights to South Africa, even though the country is closed to most passenger traffic and passengers need visas.

      BA would even transfer my cancelled CPT-LGW to -LHR on the same date. Normally preferred, but …

    • John says:

      9 Aug9 August 16:36

      Well they are, just not regular tourists, and capped at 50 people per flight. Are the prices astronomical?

• ao40 says:

  9 Aug9 August 07:43

  Confused by the comment about no connecting flights. I used to connect to/from EDI frequently, and they had just opened the corridor so that domestic connections no longer had to be bussed, which had been a problem since the move to South. What am I misunderstanding?

  • David says:

    9 Aug9 August 08:01

    Indeed, I also disagree with this “Apart from Jersey, I don’t think there were any other United Kingdom flights which could connect.”

    Loads of connections onto the EDI flights, for example.
    Also plenty of connections non-domestic to non-domestic going on too.

  • Chrisasaurus says:

    9 Aug9 August 08:06

    that it was a commercial point – connecting into a CW long haul ticket would be lucrative, connecting to EDI wlumd not

    • ao40 says:

      9 Aug9 August 09:16

      Yeah, but that is exactly what some of the EDI flights connect to…

      Admittedly, I connected there much more for short haul, but also for flights to the carribean.

  • Alan says:

    9 Aug9 August 15:30

    Agree, can you explain what you were meaning with the ‘only Jersey’ comment, Rob? Unfortunately if BA keep flying long haul from LGW but not short haul then that’s a major issue for anyone not based in the SE trying to access those flights. Already a friend has had to cancel his holiday in Nov as the Edinburgh flights are cancelled even though long haul are still flying. Unsurprisingly he didn’t fancy having to hike between LHR and LGW at silly o’clock in the morning with a couple of toddler in tow.

• Paul says:

  9 Aug9 August 08:09

  It’s really time that BA was forced to relinquish slots and let the competition in. This is particularly needed at LHR where there is nothing short of abuse on their monopoly on domestic flights.

  At LGW give the slots to others. BAs attitude to LGW has been an albatross around the neck of that much blighted airport for decades. Time to cut the cord and let others in.

  LHR too needs a shake up and I for one would like to see commercial agreements ended across the board to generate and promote genuine competition. Forcing BA to compete with AA and opening up lucrative routes like New York to others (SQ,QR,CX, anyone) can only help improve the passenger experience.

  Time for real change in aviation. Time to stop protecting BA

  • Derek Scott says:

    9 Aug9 August 08:16

    I disagree. With Brexit finally around the corner, we need to protect our national airline, the same way France, Germany, etc do with theirs at their main airports

    • ChrisC says:

      9 Aug9 August 09:46

      BA is not our national airline.

      It’s just an airline.

      • Paul74 says:

        9 Aug9 August 09:52

        Agreed.

      • Doug M says:

        9 Aug9 August 10:35

        Maybe not our national airline, but it has an awful lot of British people employed there. In a globalised world competition is all well and good so long as it’s real. Germany, France and Netherlands have made competing with LH, AF and KL somewhat tricky.
        Breaking up transport and utilities in the UK to promote competition has largely just resulted in foreign ownership of key functions in the UK. The USA will not allow the likes of CX, QR and SQ to operate LHR-JFK services regardless of UK intention.
        So often when people talk of competition their only real motive is more for them less for others.

        • Chris Heyes says:

          9 Aug9 August 11:16

          Doug M @ OK make BA our National Airline get the government to Nationalize it lol

  • Kevin says:

    9 Aug9 August 08:22

    Really? There is opportunity for competition at LHR on domestic flights. How did Little Red get on? And then there was Flybe.
    You talk about competition at LGW. Who is the biggest operator there? I think you will find the issue for BA at LHR, as mentioned in the article, is that there is already a lot of competition at LGW which leads to lower prices.

  • Mikeact says:

    9 Aug9 August 08:44

    There are already many ways to cross the pond.

• clt086 says:

  9 Aug9 August 08:15

  Why not use the BA brand but rebadge it to a low cost subsidiary like Iberia Express?

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