British Airways increases flights to six North American destinations

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• Derek says:

  14 Sep14 September 09:29

  Couple of observations… I was looking at YVR just 2 days ago and noticed the extra LHR flight. But they’ve swapped the 1 x A350 to 2 x B777. It’s appears, if flying Econ, this also changed from 9 seats across to 10. I think at least in Club they do have the New Suite.

  The other point is the comments about T5 itself. Connecting through on Wednesday, T5 was packed. Both A Gate lounges were reporting as 95-100% full (via very handy Loungebird app). It did make me wonder if increased flights are going to argue for a need for more passenger space pushed to B& C gates with smarter passenger flows to drive more to not stop in A and go straight to B & C.

  For me this means being much earlier to indicate departure from B & C and also develop a C gate lounge, as well as improve shopping brand mix at these gates to help that direct flow

  • Richie says:

    14 Sep14 September 10:55

    Is T5D long over due?

    • JDB says:

      14 Sep14 September 11:14

      B & C will be extended first. Quite a few years off though since expansion plans haven’t yet been published (and H8 regulation discussions only just starting) and the incredibly tortuous/slow planning and regulatory processes.

      • Nick says:

        14 Sep14 September 12:17

        HAL control the gate screens in T5 and won’t allow ‘go to B/C’ to be displayed any earlier as it takes people away from the shops. It’s a very contentious point but ultimately isn’t going to be changed.

        T5D will be operated ‘virtually’ rather than as a physical building. So more intensive use of remote stands but better planning for loading teams, etc.

        • JDB says:

          14 Sep14 September 16:17

          @Nick – this idea about it being a HAL scheme to keep people in the shops is such nonsense. Just a really tired trope.

        • Paul says:

          14 Sep14 September 17:36

          Ah the famous

          Bored waiting?……Board sooner!

          Corporate face off in the early 2000!

          Heathrow Airport went ballistic utterly Tonto!! in less than 24 hours! The whole thing, badges , posters, tag line, everything pulled in less than 36 hours and it took years to recover

        • Lady London says:

          14 Sep14 September 22:40

          Not really sure why this should be thought unique to HAL. Stansted Airport is pretty open about doing the same for the same reasons.

        • Lady London says:

          14 Sep14 September 22:44

          Oh, and Gatwick as well.

          Until you crack the code to work it out ahead, because the airport refuses to display gate numbers till you almost can’t get to the really remote satellite ones in time, you may not know if you’ve literally got a 2 minute sidestep to your gate or a very arduous trek that can easily take 20 minutes with a death defying slope of elevator at the end.

    • Paul says:

      14 Sep14 September 17:31

      Never going to happen!

• Colin MacKinnon says:

  14 Sep14 September 09:53

  It amazes me the number of airlines that are making a go of flying out of Edinburgh – particularly to North America.
  Can’t help thinking BA is losing out here.

  And they are definitely losing out with connections to Gatwick- just booked elsewhere long-haul because didn’t want risk EasyJet and a missed connection.

  • JDB says:

    14 Sep14 September 11:20

    I don’t think BA is missing any tricks. Setting up another base is very costly and complicated. Those other long haul airlines aren’t doing that. As per another post, look at Barcelona a very rich city and area and many airlines offer long haul routes from there but Iberia doesn’t (except with Level). The experience of others trying to do this has been fatal.

    • aseftel says:

      14 Sep14 September 13:53

      Widebodies going to the East Coast spend a lot of time parked, so I imagine you could base out of LHR and then do a LHR-EDI-JFK-EDI-LHR in a pretty similar ‘cycle’ to a simple LHR-JFK-LHR.

      Still, BA is somewhat widebody-constrained and I doubt that EDI-JFK is top of the marginal routes list even if you can sort out the basing issues.

      • @mkcol says:

        14 Sep14 September 17:35

        I hope you meant a W pattern viz: LHR-JFK-EDI-JFK-LHR

• Throwawayname says:

  14 Sep14 September 10:08

  It looks less like a question of routes or even broader economics (the US economy isn’t doing that well overall, the issue is that increasing inequality means there’s more premium demand from those benefitting from the K-shaped recovery; think about why a fair few airlines sell F on routes like GRU and MEX) and more like one of mindset – BA are behaving like a typical American corporation, cultivating a focus on a specific niche where they already have a competitive advantage (brand equity, corporate contracts, and high frequencies) in order to pursue short-term profit instead of seeking to invest in becoming more competitive on a wider array of markets.

  Of course, the corollary to that is that any kind of crisis in the USA is going to screw them up big time and they will have nowhere else to go as they are irrelevant in other long-haul markets. However, you cannot blame them for following a high risk – high reward strategy, given that the British taxpayer will likely bail them out again if things were to go horribly wrong.

  • BBbetter says:

    14 Sep14 September 10:58

    Thank god such people are not running airlines.

  • JDB says:

    14 Sep14 September 11:24

    @Throwawayname – please can you remind us when the UK taxpayer last had to bail out BA. [I don’t include the covid era as BA received a loan on the same basis as any other company in any sector and it was fully repayable].

  • Throwawayname says:

    14 Sep14 September 15:29

    They were bailed out during COVID. Of course other airlines were helped out too (but not all, for example Czech Airlines didn’t get anything and that was the final nail on the coffin). I have no doubt that they would be deemed too big to fail if it ever came to that- and I don’t blame them for taking advantage of it, that’s how the system works nowadays.

    • JDB says:

      14 Sep14 September 16:19

      BA was not bailed out by the government during covid but by its shareholders. Many European and US airlines were, but not BA or Virgin. BA hasn’t been bailed out by the government since privatisation in 1987.

      • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

        14 Sep14 September 18:04

        IIRC BA/IAG didn’t like the terms of the UK ‘offer’ so didn’t take it.

        The US Government ‘offer’ to US based airlines came with a heck of a lot of strings. Airlines took the money but then extracated themselves from the loans as soon as they could

    • Throwawayname says:

      14 Sep14 September 18:00

      BA was one of the companies that took advantage of the Bank of England’s COVID Corporate Finance Facility. I’m not hung up on whether that should be defined as a bailout, but the point is that they have already benefitted from assistance underwritten by the UK taxpayer and my view is that they are likely to secure state support if they ever face an existential crisis (obviously not talking about the odd year in the red here).

      I appreciate that others might have a different view re the likelihood of state intervention in support of businesses that may be deemed too big to fail, but I can’t see why my assessment would be surprising to anyone who’s been around and seen what happened after the GFC and in 2020-21.

    • Ziggy says:

      14 Sep14 September 18:05

      A bail out is what the US airlines were given (billions in grants). What BA got was a loan (possibly plural) with the same or similar terms to other businesses which, I think, has already been fully repaid. As for Czech Airlines, didn’t it just have just 3 planes and operate two routes?

      • Throwawayname says:

        14 Sep14 September 18:48

        Before the pandemic, Smartwings had plans to grow CSA back to a respectable size. The pandemic and the lack of state aid put paid to all of that and the airline limped along for another couple of years before closing down.

        Let’s not get too technical about the structure of any rescue proposals for troubled TBTF businesses, my point is that governments do their best to prevent them from falling. Let’s take a hypothetical example of BA being on the brink of collapse and there’s a possibility that QR may be interested in taking them over. A rushed change in legislation to allow foreign ownership of UK airlines certainly cannot be called a bailout, but it would constitute state intervention with the aim of benefitting the TBTF business [and with collateral damage inadvertently caused to their competition], so the taxpayer would be [albeit indirectly] contributing to the rescue of the company.

        • Thegasman says:

          15 Sep15 September 14:06

          Seem to recall BA arguing against generous government support packages in COVID as they felt they could lean on alternative funding streams in a way VS couldn’t. Unfortunately for them VS managed to cling on.

        • Rob says:

          15 Sep15 September 14:39

          Not quite. BA refused money to ensure Virgin didn’t get any. As soon as Virgin agreed its rescue package with Delta, BA literally the next week took support.

• Dev says:

  14 Sep14 September 10:15

  Flying to North America is very efficient use of aircraft as well. Along with the plethora of routes and multiple daily flights to many locations, they can probably eek out even more efficiency.

  Anything beyond Delhi/Mumbai to the east and Nairobi in Africa requires more than 1 aircraft.

• meta says:

  14 Sep14 September 11:49

  It’s not like there is a vast amount of choice to fly direct from London to Asia, South America and Africa on other airlines… While I am happy that BA is making profits, I also don’t care where they fly anymore as the level or service and even the hard product had gone downhill.

  • Lady London says:

    14 Sep14 September 22:59

    I am actually wondering if this is a concerted attempt by BA and its partners in the Transatlantic Air Travel OneWorld Cartel, sorry I mean the Transatlantic Alliance, in particular increasing saturation of those routes to the dis-benefit of US competition such as UA and DL? They’ve certainly left the Middle East and near Asia to QR.

• Matarredonda says:

  14 Sep14 September 11:55

  Indigo an excellent IHG brand as stayed in a few over last 12 months but t6he one in Durham really stands out.

  • Christopher says:

    14 Sep14 September 14:38

    I booked a couple in the states off the back of how nice UK ones have been… They are a different kettle of fish over there – both the Austin and San Antonio were fine and I got a good redemption deal but neither was fantastic

• Stuart says:

  14 Sep14 September 12:00

  When does the 3rd IAD start? I have a booking in April but was trying to find the timing of the new flight but can’t see it in the system

  • Rui N. says:

    14 Sep14 September 21:52

    It starts end of March. It’s between the 2 previous flights mid-afternoon, on a 787

• Maples says:

  14 Sep14 September 12:26

  iS tHiS a sIGn oF dEvALuaTIon??¿¿

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