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British Airways adds Edinburgh to Gatwick flights

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Here’s an interesting one. British Airways is launching flights from Edinburgh to Gatwick, adding a rare domestic connection to the Gatwick long-haul network.

It’s not exactly pushing the boat out though.

The service will only operate on Sundays and only for the summer season.

British Airways adds Edinburgh to Gatwick flights

The first flight will be on 26th May. It departs Edinburgh at 07.10, landing in Gatwick at 08.40. The return leaves Gatwick at 09.25, landing in Edinburgh at 10.40.

This is a BA Cityflyer service. This means that it uses an Embraer 190 aircraft with 2×2 seating throughout. Club Europe is available, although you get the same 2×2 seating and the seat next to you is not blocked.

I assume that this service is simply a way of keeping an aircraft busy whilst London City Airport is closed over the weekend. There are, astonishingly, three flights to London City Airport from Edinburgh within 15 minutes on a Sunday:

British Airways adds Edinburgh to Gatwick flights

…. as the fleet is put back into action after the weekend break.

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Category

British Airways and Avios

Comments (49)

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

  • BJ says:
    24 Mar24 March 08:31

    Qatar availability on BA has been missing (weird) for months now whilst being widely available on QAPC and other OW partner sites. This is not just JAL, it’s other partners and has been going on for years off and on. There is nothing new nor weird about it, and it’s certainly not news.

  • Mr. AC says:
    24 Mar24 March 09:08

    BA is very unreliable w.r.t. oneworld availability, no idea why. I usually double check via AA, and if they have availability but BA doesn’t show it, the ticket often can be booked with Avios via Iberia. But that has a big downside – Iberia award tickets on partner airlines are non-refundable.

  • Paul says:
    24 Mar24 March 09:10

    The lack of JAL seats is just the result of BA having too much dominance in the U.K. and the now highly dubious commercial agreements that exist with JL IB AA and AY. There is no competition at all between these carriers and fares are higher as a result. Helsinki being a particular case in point.

  • Laura says:
    24 Mar24 March 09:12

    I got quite excited when I saw the headlines reinstating Edinburgh/gatwick 🤣 but it quickly disappeared. Since flights resumed after COVID we have flown BA from Gatwick on 7 return journeys and the experience to get to Heathrow for connecting flight on 5 of those has been pretty bad and stressful for various reasons, mainly due to delays on return flight, missing connections, traffic issues, train/tube issues, no support at Gatwick etc, and we’ve tried various ways to get from Gatwick to Heathrow .
    Connections are big business from Scotland !

    • tony says:
      24 Mar24 March 09:35

      But doesn’t this approach simply give BA no incentive to change? You have choices when it comes to who you fly with – LH, KL, AF, EI etc – but you’re the one persisting with the LHR-LGW haul.

      You’re presumably doing that based on price, product and/or the loyalty perks, so BA know fine well that the current combination works for you even with the inconvenience. Why would anyone invest heavily to solve a problem that doesn’t exist?

      • Ryan says:
        24 Mar24 March 11:01

        That’s simply not true.

        Pre covid, there were multiple daily flights from. EDI, GLA and ABZ to LGW. Now there is a very limited service from GLA.

        Highly unlikely that BA are relying on anyone doing the arduous task of connecting from LHR – LGW

    • Colin_Thames says:
      24 Mar24 March 11:15

      Totally agree. EDI-LGW was a decent service pre-covid. Now it’ll be better to go Eazyjet to Gatwick if you have the misfortune to have a BA long haul from LGW.
      I can’t see the logic in reinstating just one EDI-LGW flight a week, especially on a Sunday. Who does that help? And if it’s cancelled or delayed you’d be totally screwed.
      Cynically I wonder if someone at BA is trying to prove there’s “no demand” for these flights, by making it incredibly unlikely anyone would want to use it.

  • Chrisp says:
    24 Mar24 March 09:45

    We booked Avios flights Man to Tokyo in May with Qatar as soon as they were available. The return Tokyo to Doha flight was then changed to JAL. In February we were told the JAL flight & the Qatar back to Manchester had been cancelled.

    When I checked neither flight had been cancelled so I rang BA who were extremely helpful & said we could “risk it” or they would rebook us on a BA flight Tokyo – LHR – MAN. Although not Qatar nor JAL this seems a good result as it’s quicker & we fly back west to east in daylight. It was surprising since there was no Avios availability on this flight but I do now wonder if this was a case of JAL pulling Avios flights.

  • jsto says:
    24 Mar24 March 10:18

    I now want to get the 11.10 from EDI for the nifty overtaking manoeuvre it pulls off presumably somewhere above Leeds!

  • PB884 says:
    24 Mar24 March 10:53

    Interesting – I was searching reward flights on BA for Tokyo – Seoul in December just last night and wondered why it was so quick to tell me no availability on any day…

    • RK228 says:
      24 Mar24 March 13:04

      Make sure to search GMP (Gimpo) as inputting Seoul will only search Incheon, I think, which I’m not sure JAL serves (possibly only via code share).

      I have GMP-HND booked for July on JAL and I just searched some random dates in December (20th and 21st) and there was availability in economy both dates.

  • Simon says:
    24 Mar24 March 11:48

    It seems the Loyalty Lobby doesn’t know what they are talking about. There is no evidence that JL has to provide the same availability to AA and BA, unless you have the two contracts under the eyes. Lot of misinformation here, but at least it lets people say how bad Avios is.

    • Mikeact says:
      24 Mar24 March 14:18

      ‘How bad Avios is’. What’s that supposed to mean ?

    • newbz says:
      24 Mar24 March 16:39

      Same thoughts here, availability across partners often differs (I’ve experienced the same with CX award availability which is different using BA and AA miles).

      Similarly, when I search for *A availability using Avianca Life Miles, Air Canada, United and Singapore, I usually get 4 sets of different flights…

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

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