British Airways adds 16 Manchester / Heathrow – Porto flights for the Champions League final

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• Colin MacKinnon says:

  13 May13 May 15:15

  And the EU is adding the UK to the list of foreign countries allowed to enter the Union?

  Or is Portugal breaking ranks?

  • Rob says:

    13 May13 May 15:18

    Still TBC! The problem, apparently, is that Portugal currently holds the EU presidency so breaking ranks is a bad look.

    • meta says:

      13 May13 May 15:34

      I think they will allow UK citizens and residents from 1 June when the digital green certificate launches.

      • Rob says:

        13 May13 May 15:40

        Exactly … and the football is 29th May.

        • kitten says:

          13 May13 May 17:16

          I would call this a crisis 🙂

• Journeying John says:

  13 May13 May 15:27

  So why have BA ignored / actively removed direct flights from anywhere outside Heathrow (& to a lesser extent Gatwick) over the past decade?
  We all know profit has trumped customer service or experience for BA for many years but the sudden return seems desperate given the way BA have behaved wrt. Northern airports & servicing customers based other than near London for over a decade

  • Colin MacKinnon says:

    13 May13 May 15:42

    Costs.
    BA tried launching Go to rival Easyjet and Ryanair, but sold it off.
    Easyjet and Ryanair also had much better promotion prospects – ideal if you seek captaincy. So a fine balance between being a better paid first officer in BA, but for much much longer than an Easyjet FO. So your pal the Easyjet captain is earning more than you and has that extra gold ring!
    Eventually, as a BA captain, you’ll earn more than an Easyjet one – but when?
    Then the European rules raised the retirement age from 55 to 63 – so there was an added eight year delay for BA first officers to get into the left-hand seat!
    So who wanted to be a poorly-paid BA crew with poor promotion prospects in the regions? Better to be with the LoCos.
    Better for BA too to concentrate on long-haul where there was less competition.
    Profit is always a key for BA – as a legacy airline they have legacy pension debts. Only way to pay them off is to make profit, and lots of it.
    Foe the newer LoCos, this is not an issue.

    • Tim says:

      13 May13 May 19:21

      Quite a few minor inaccuracies here (retirement age is 65, EZY FOs have pre-Covid waited 7/8yrs for command but BA can be under 6 months if joining as ‘experienced’, money at BA can match EZY within 5yrs easily, and the idea that an extra ‘ring’ is important to somebody in a legacy airline), but the sentiment is correct. BA suddenly have a lot of spare aircraft and crew, and would be stupid not to use it. Football flights are never close to cheap and are easy money for any airline. BA would be silly not to use their spare capacity now.

  • Andrew says:

    13 May13 May 17:21

    There seems to be an oft held opinion by many here that BA are ‘missing out’ by not offering direct flights from the regions. BA aren’t mugs when it comes to optimising profit. If they thought there was money to be made by year round MAN to wherever flights you can guarantee they’d be doing it. At the moment they’ve got airframes going spare and helping a few thousand football fans (who will be desperate to see some live football and not at all price sensitive) getting to Portugal is too good an opportunity for them to pass up. In normal times they realise they can’t compete with Ryanair, Easyjet, Jet2 et al from the regions.

• Tom says:

  13 May13 May 15:29

  Presume no Avios availability here…

  • Rob says:

    13 May13 May 15:34

    Avios seats were loaded and are still there for some flights.

    • Tom says:

      13 May13 May 15:35

      Ahh, not finding any availability now from London.

      • Rob says:

        13 May13 May 15:40

        Manchester was there two minutes ago for Sunday.

• Ron says:

  13 May13 May 15:57

  Not that I’m going to book these flights, but I can’t see there is any flight OPO to MAN on 28/5. Only 30/5 showing two inbound flights.

  • Rob says:

    13 May13 May 16:27

    Updated. BA has shuffled the flights since the official announcement.

• BSI1978 says:

  13 May13 May 15:59

  Absolute nonsense UEFA hasn’t allowed them to bring the final to England given the finalist’s. All because UEFA bigwigs wanted to retain all their perks and not have to quarantine.

  Yes things are opening up / improving but actively encouraging 10k+ people to travel to and from Portugal just seems ridiculous

  • Rob says:

    13 May13 May 16:27

    UK Government clearly thinks having 10k UK fans fly to Porto is safer than a few thousand UEFA / media / sponsors coming over. Whether that is correct or not is a different question.

    • ChrisW says:

      13 May13 May 16:43

      Apparently UEFA offered to have the final at Wembley on the condition all UEFA officials attending could skip quarantine. UK Gov refused this condition so match moved to Portugal.

      • TGLoyalty says:

        13 May13 May 17:03

        Which is what Rob said …

        The U.K. fans and delegates will still be mixing with people who have skipped quarantine etc

    • J says:

      13 May13 May 17:20

      I can see how this way (10k travelling as opposed to 2k visiting) might make sense if 1) Most trips are just for the weekend (so fans are back at home before likely to be contagious) and 2) Fans follow the testing rules on their return and take some level of personal responsibility to semi-isolate.

      • Phillip says:

        13 May13 May 22:58

        What testing rules? With Portugal being green, doesn’t that mean they only need a lateral flow test to board the return flight?! So there really isn’t any risk management here. Considering how it all went upside down for Italy and Spain early in the pandemic with the super spreading football matches, this will be interesting. I hope they are least use it as a “research” opportunity that can provide further evidence for moving on!

        • J says:

          14 May14 May 12:24

          Ah, you’re right. For some reason I thought you had to do day 2 and day 8 testing from Green list.

    • BuildBackBetter says:

      13 May13 May 17:39

      A bit of an overstatement. Given Man City has 200 fans and Chelsea a bit more.

      • bafan says:

        13 May13 May 18:19

        LOL

• Jack Hodgson says:

  13 May13 May 16:00

  Just looking now, the prices have sky rocketed with the cheapest return going at nearly £700 for Manchester and £400 for Heathrow. Also looks as if all Avios seats have been snapped up very quick. I do however, think that this is a great approach by BA introducing new routes from regional airports outside of London, something I hope is a permeant move

• MH75 says:

  13 May13 May 16:01

  I get different results to what you’ve advertised in my gds (sabre)

  • Rob says:

    13 May13 May 16:25

    Just updated, thank you. BA seems to have made some tweaks.

• r* says:

  13 May13 May 16:23

  No interest in going, but was curious how much they were charging and it seems like they arent selling economy basic tickets, only economy plus… is that normal or are they trying to cash in?

  • Rob says:

    13 May13 May 16:24

    It’s not really ‘cashing in’ because BA could simply charge that price for Basic if it wished. Not sure what is going on.

    • Tom says:

      13 May13 May 17:12

      Where’s that revenue-based Avios/TP earning when you need it, eh!

  • Ken says:

    13 May13 May 16:54

    It’s pretty normal.
    ‘Day’ return flights Liverpool to Athens in 2007 were roughly £600. Finals on a Wednesday in those days so many did day returns to limit time off work.

    Unless you take a punt before the semi finals (irrelevant this year), or try and do a circuitous route – say Manchester – Amsterdam- Porto (again problematic this year), that’s what you pay.

    At least Friday out , Sunday back is a decent weekend of it.

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