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British Airways axes more Southampton flights for Summer 2023 – what’s left?

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For the second time in recent months, British Airways has taken an axe to its flying schedule out of Southampton Airport.

Some HfP readers may be surprised to know that British Airways runs a relatively large number of routes out of Southampton.

The launch of these services got caught up in the pandemic (the original announcement was made in December 2020) so they have never had much of a promotional push. The initial route launches were, in many cases, heavily delayed or suspended altogether. There is – was – a full service planned for Summer 2023.

EDIT: The original version of this article said that start dates for Southampton flights had been pushed back to mid July. Whilst flights seemed to have temporarily disappeared from the booking system yesterday, they are still operating. Apologies for any inconvenience caused. We have listed the start dates below.

British Airways southampton

Southampton Airport was, as the picture below shows, a major Flybe base before the airline collapsed. The BA services are a welcome respite for the airport which lost virtually all of its scheduled services at that point, although many routes have been picked up by other airlines since.

The BA flights use the Embraer E190 aircraft which serve London City Airport during the week but have nothing to do when City is closed over the weekend.

Which routes were pulled in October?

Back in October, three routes from Southampton were cancelled for Summer 2023. The cancelled routes are:

  • Florence
  • Ibiza
  • Nice

To this list you can now add:

  • Mykonos

(But don’t panic – if you search Southampton to Mykonos on ba.com, you are offered Southampton to Glasgow (Loganair) to London Gatwick to Heathrow to Mykonos, a trip taking almost 20 hours.)

British Airways chops three Southampton routes for Summer 2023

What British Airways routes remain at Southampton?

Here is the list. Some of the routes below only have one departure per week. You are locked into a seven night trip unless you fly back to a different British Airways airport or fly back to Southampton on a different airline.

  • Alicante
  • Bergerac
  • Dublin
  • Edinburgh
  • Faro
  • Limoges
  • Malaga
  • Palma

When do flights start?

The current start dates for 2023 are:

  • Faro – 29th April
  • Malaga – 30th April
  • Bergerac – 13th May
  • Palma – 13th May
  • Edinburgh – 14th May
  • Alicante – 15th July
  • Limoges – 15th July
  • Dublin – 16th July

What routes does BA fly from Southampton over the Winter?

Not many, but there is some life!

  • Chambery (ends 16th April)
  • Edinburgh (ends 16th April)
  • Salzburg (ends 15th April)

Southampton is a good airport for Londoners ….

Many Londoners have probably never flown from Southampton. It is, however, surprisingly easy.

You can get a direct train from London Waterloo to Southampton Airport Parkway station. You will be in the small terminal building within a couple of minutes.

Is there a lounge? Yes. Here is our review of the Spitfire Lounge at Southampton Airport.

Is there Business Class? Yes, Business Class is available. As these are Embraer aircraft with 2×2 seating, however, there is no ’empty middle seat’ benefit. You would get access to the Spitfire Lounge.

Flights are bookable as usual via ba.com, for cash or Avios.

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Comments (35)

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

  • polly says:
    20 Dec20 December 06:38

    Bergerac route so handy through summer, we were planning a quick week early July, but that’s scuppered now. Easier and quicker than getting into LCY (or STN) of course.

  • Andrew Mc says:
    20 Dec20 December 07:27

    Rob, how are you offered “Southampton to Glasgow to London Gatwick to Mykonos” when Glasgow doesn’t even appear on your list? 🙂

  • Barnaby100 says:
    20 Dec20 December 07:30

    Lots of Newcastle cancellations came through yesterday and so looks like they have trimmed that route as well

  • Mikeact says:
    20 Dec20 December 07:56

    Ah well, back to the M3 or train to Gatwick.

  • dave says:
    20 Dec20 December 08:15

    Hopefully more services return soon, Gatwick/Stansted are such a pain to get to from the southwest

  • TimM says:
    20 Dec20 December 08:23

    Perhaps it is because Southampton airport is so easy to reach from central London that services are being cancelled? BA just has too much capacity in London and the South East. Better to move the Embraers back to the North of England at the weekends.

    • yorkieflyer says:
      20 Dec20 December 08:29

      I wish

    • Nick says:
      20 Dec20 December 08:35

      Even at the airport closest to BACF’s HQ (MAN) they didn’t make any money on these weekend flights. Yields are much higher at SOU, and fuel costs lower with half an hour shaved off the flight time.

    • Lady London says:
      20 Dec20 December 13:12

      There’s a lot of money located in areas from which it’s easy to reach Southampton Airport. There are far more decent jobs these days around Southampton and Bristol and even further West than in West London these days after the mass exodus of good employers from the capital. To say nothing of how easy it is to reach SOU from the ‘stockbroker belt’.

      And from what Rob says, SOU is a much nicer experience than either Heathrow or back-to-grotty Gatwick which pre-covid, had made so many good improvements as to be a nice airport but has now dropped back to previous grot.

      So it’s such a pity BA clearly does not want to provide a service from SOU, and has just chosen to cherrypick the absolute peak summer season for whole weeks and school holidays only. Instead of thinking seriously about offering services for the ‘wealth belt’.

      At least there’s still private jets out of Farnborough and a few other places. But it’s a pity that the only moderately wealthy are not being served.

  • Harry T says:
    20 Dec20 December 08:33

    BA have cancelled my midday NCL-LHR for next May about two days after I booked it!

    • Numpty says:
      20 Dec20 December 08:56

      They’ve also cancelled my GLA flight for next May – got the email ‘we’ve changed your seat reservation’ before the cancellation email!

      • JDB says:
        20 Dec20 December 09:02

        Ditto. Hopefully will work out well for everyone. My May LHR-ARN/CPH-LHR flights had the outbound inconveniently rescheduled and the return cancelled which enabled me to rebook both online to the flights I actually preferred vs the ones I had chosen as they were by far the cheapest – only £220 return Club.

      • ClubSmed says:
        20 Dec20 December 09:05

        Same here, for my GLA flight in April. Yesterday I got the email ‘we’ve changed your seat reservation’ before the cancellation email…

    • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:
      20 Dec20 December 11:29

      Two days? thats eons of time.

      Last year I booked a flight at 11am. Got the cancellation email at 11pm

      Even the BA holidays rep was shocked by that!

  • Simon says:
    20 Dec20 December 08:42

    They seem to have taken an axe to quite a few flights this week, I booked a FRA-LHR for May 1st and it was cancelled a day after I booked it. I had a LHR-VIE round trip booked for May cancelled, booked a replacement flight and 8 minutes after booking it got a seat reservation change, checked and found that had also been cancelled.

    Maybe it’s always happened but I’m only just noticing but it seems to be common for airlines to sell a full schedule of flights these days then take an axe to some nearer the time, resulting in inflated price flights where they have combined 2 or 3 flights into 1. At least unlike last year more notice is being given.

    • Lady London says:
      20 Dec20 December 13:27

      In this respect it’s clearly been planned to circumvent EU261 as much as they can, by BA and other airlines well ahead. Under cover of covid Easyjet and BA appear to have vastly extended the number of hours change in flight departure time under their terms and conditions, that they want a passenger to be forced to accept by BA or Easyjet being able to unilaterally change flight time as they please.

      Nothing that if BA puts, say, 5 hours as the time BA can move a flight by, without the passenger being able to refuse, what they’ve actually done is say they want to be able to reschedule that flight to anytime within a 10-hour period, not a 5-hour period, as the 5 hours they mention they’ll apply either before or after at their choosing.

      Since as @JDB says, UK courts are not obliged to follow EU decisions that bringing a flight forward by more than 1 hour gives passengers cancellation rights, I can only suggest passengers watch out for 2 things:

      1. look out for flight number change which regardless of airline presenting it as a reschedule, means it’s a cancellation not a reschedule (Easyjet consolidated flights up to 14 hours apart IME in covid, and tried to say it was not a cancellation but a reschedule when actually they’d consolidated several flights onto just 1 and cancelled all the other flights).

      2. Don’t forget to watch for ‘schedule creep’ ie multiple moves which amount to a cancellation. IMV you should always be able to compare to your original time booked as to whether the sum total of any moves is acceptable or not.

      • JDB says:
        20 Dec20 December 22:52

        BA’s rescheduling time for allowing changes is over 120 minutes and they will allow less for same day trips, flights for cruise bookings and flight (mis) connections. See their Customer Guidelines.

        A flight number change does not necessarily = cancellation which has a very specific meaning in the legislation that is elaborated in the Interpretative Guidelines.

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