British Airways drops four short-haul routes – and Glasgow to Gatwick closing?

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• NorthernLass says:

  24 Dec24 December 14:03

  BA binned the MAN-LGW route over 10 years ago, lost much of the US/Caribbean traffic from the north and clearly couldn’t care less, so this move wouldn’t surprise me.

  • Novice says:

    24 Dec24 December 14:11

    They are truly London Airways who also can be used by ppl living in SW. Or maybe they should just change their name to Southern England Airways 😂

    • George says:

      24 Dec24 December 15:26

      Best joke I’ve ever heard

    • Joseph says:

      24 Dec24 December 20:42

      I have been saying this for years and i write it on every survey i get from BA that they should change there name to either London Airways or South Eastern (UK) Airways

  • George says:

    24 Dec24 December 23:13

    Another day. Another post from northern lass about BA not flying from Manchester. Imagine if other airlines existed

  • MGOR says:

    25 Dec25 December 19:14

    We used to enjoy going to Grenada and would use Man -LGW to connect. Once the flight stopped we tried different routings – train to Euston the night before and then fight our way to LGW, drive and even Virgin via Barbados. All had their pitfalls so we’ve stopped going to Grenada. There’s lots of other places in the world and other airlines out there. Last time we flew BA was March 2020 to India via a painful connection Man -LHR. Since then we’ve not been west from Man but East using the plethora of ME airlines. BA’s loss. I am sorry not to have been back to Grenada though….

    • Tiger of ham says:

      27 Dec27 December 18:56

      KLM does a better job and makes it work connecting UK regional airports to the world.

      Like you say the Me3 have taken a lot of the traffic going east – even for the southerners.

  • Mikeact says:

    25 Dec25 December 21:55

    How many more times….MAN folk, and further North, were not prepared to pay,….they much prefer Ryanair, easyjet etc.as has been pointed out earlier. And quite rightly refused to pay and voted with their feet.

    • Toilet Paper Man says:

      26 Dec26 December 00:25

      I think the biggest sign of Manchester’s unwillingness to pay for flights was the report last month in The Times that 1 in 4 people in Manchester are unemployed. I can’t paste web links but a google search of ” The Times that 1 in 4 people” brings it up

      • Mike Fish says:

        26 Dec26 December 07:17

        You have misunderstood the article, see comment below the next time you misinterpreted it.

• Catalan says:

  24 Dec24 December 14:42

  Regional flying is just not profitable in the UK unless you’re a low cost operator, and I doubt profits are exceptional. Virgin tried it with Virgin Little Red from LHR to MAN/EDI/ABZ. It flopped after a mere 18 months. The only passengers who used it in any numbers were those connecting to Virgin Atlantic’s long haul routes. Barely any point to point traffic.
  Im not sure why people complain so much about BA not flying to every city in the UK when there are plenty of other options as everyone keeps pointing out.
  It really doesn’t seem (for now) that BA are missing out on any opportunities in the north.

  • Rob B says:

    24 Dec24 December 15:19

    You think up to 20 Edinburgh daily return flights from London aren’t profitable? With the first dozen or so rows in biz class? Really? Plenty of gold and silver cards on that route…

    • NorthernLass says:

      24 Dec24 December 19:41

      Someone’s paying £300 each way in economy on the MAN route!

    • LV61 says:

      29 Dec29 December 17:10

      Yes but would really like BA to have the Edinburgh Gatwick route again, there are so many options for connecting flights from there now as they’ve been increasing destinations there more and more ! Connecting is a risk if from different airports or different airlines and stressful !

  • Matarredonda says:

    24 Dec24 December 16:42

    Both Ryanairxand Easyjet threatening to reduce iter UK flights due to lack of profit as an aircraft Canberra nlbetter utilised flying to Europe making more money

  • CheshirePete says:

    24 Dec24 December 21:04

    I think the dynamics of MAN>LHR are different now though. Even with 3 trains per hour the expense and unreliability of West Coast compared to when Virgin trains launched the 20 minute frequency, is not the same now. You can pay less and get free food and drink. Sometimes there’s 10 flights a day each way.

  • CJD says:

    24 Dec24 December 21:11

    I don’t believe for a second it’s not profitable. It’s undoubtedly more profitable to do it from London, but Manchester airport has a huge catchment area and Edinburgh and Glasgow between them have a catchment area of 2-3m. I don’t believe for a second that there isn’t a decent profit to be made from some direct routes from MAN, EDI and GLA, either for BA or another airline.

    • Ryan says:

      26 Dec26 December 11:29

      Correct.

  • Mike Fish says:

    25 Dec25 December 04:09

    Why is every MAN-LHR (and LHR-MAN) flight I’m on packed to the rafters if there’s no demand?

  • Andrew. says:

    25 Dec25 December 07:59

    It’s the other way round wasn’t it?

    It was mostly domestic passengers with little in the way of connecting traffic.

  • Track says:

    25 Dec25 December 18:56

    Maybe general public is not smart. Easily paying paying 200 for peak train tickets.

    But then airports are crammed and you need to get through to them, and through the prison security. Extra 1-2 hours easily.

    Those ridiculous 100ml requirements, photos taken at each point — the airline/airport industry just destroys the convenience.

• Thomas says:

  24 Dec24 December 16:59

  Why is BA happy for KLM, LH, to come on their patch and mop up feeder traffic without even putting up a fight?

  • JDB says:

    24 Dec24 December 17:28

    Because they don’t have capacity for low value domestic flights at their LHR hub and BA also sucks traffic from European regions to travel via London.

    • Thomas says:

      24 Dec24 December 19:44

      Bizarre if correct, as they are not interested in ” low value traffic” whilst willing to serve fruit and a cookie to save 15 pence on dinner service in their premium cabins.

      • Londonsteve says:

        25 Dec25 December 00:10

        This. It speaks to the dysfunctionality of the whole Heathrow operation. £10k J flights to the US are important because it’s the backbone of the operation and the only thing they can realistically milk, everything else is ignored. They sit counting their profit while Rome burns, convincing themselves they’ve got the best business model in the sky. Trump might have something to say about that.

  • Catalan says:

    24 Dec24 December 20:25

    There’s probably a Thomas in France complaining that Air France are allowing British Airways to mop up feeder traffic into LHR from Paris, Bordeaux, Lyon, Marseille and Nice (to name but a few) instead of putting up a fight!

    • RC says:

      24 Dec24 December 22:26

      That would be Bordeaux and Lyon where BA has severely cut frequencies would it?

    • Londonsteve says:

      25 Dec25 December 00:13

      Air France and its affiliated carriers not only have a more comprehensive domestic network from Paris, France also has a superb network of high speed trains with a TGV station at CDG. In comparison Heathrow looks like Chisinau, not only in connectivity, but with respect to aesthetics too.

    • Thomas says:

      25 Dec25 December 07:34

      KLM anounced their 18th! Destination in the UK with Exeter this month. Believe me, they are taking business away from BA! Because otherwise, they simply would not do it.

      • Toilet Paper Man says:

        26 Dec26 December 00:28

        Last month, The Times had a huge report that 1 in 4 people in Manchester are unemployed ( I can’t paste web links but a google search of ” The Times that 1 in 4 people” brings it up ).

        So KLM is just taking the low value, cheap business away from BA.

        • Mike Fish says:

          26 Dec26 December 07:16

          You have posted about this twice, both time incorrectly quoting the article. It’s not unemployed, it’s economically inactive. Manchester is 25%, the UK as a whole is near 22%. It blows your hypothesis out of the water. London, was over 21% despite the huge sums the government spends on the public sector there, and an order of magnitude great transport spending.

        • Rob says:

          26 Dec26 December 09:32

          … and many ‘economically inactive’ people are financially well off, which is WHY they are ‘economically inactive’ (and have plenty of time to jump on planes). Virtually all of us will know people who are under official retirement age but don’t work through choice.

  • Catalan says:

    24 Dec24 December 20:33

    And let’s not forget BA’ s feeder routes into LHR from Frankfurt, Berlin, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Hanover, Munich and Stuttgart with Lufthansa hardly ‘putting up a fight’

    • RC says:

      24 Dec24 December 22:25

      Regrettably that’s not a correct assertion:
      Lufthansa has an almost hourly London/Frankfurt. BA has far fewer flights. Ditto Munich. While Lufthansa run Eurowings with often with better frequency than BA (and more punctually per HAL data) from almost every other city mentioned. Lufthansa group airlines serves Uk regions too.
      Which leaves one pondering: Which bit of IAG does @catalan work for? If so, perhaps more effort on fixing the IT might be a good start?

      • PH says:

        25 Dec25 December 00:02

        The relevant comparison would be how well LH serves their hubs (Frankfurt & Munich) and other German cities vs how well BA serves LHR/LGW and other UK cities.

        • Londonsteve says:

          25 Dec25 December 00:20

          Quite. LH and AF make a much greater effort to service their country because they can. Their hub airports aren’t as heavily slot restricted as LHR, it’s worth flying a turboprop from a tertiary city in other countries because it carries fare paying passengers connecting onto other flights. BA serves roughly 20 million people in London and the SE of England, as well as people connecting through LHR. Realistically, because it can’t do more due to slot restrictions. But it’s happy with this state of affairs because it’s the biggest fish in its (relatively) little pond.

      • Brian says:

        25 Dec25 December 10:02

        Surely the comparison is how BA flies from LHR and EI serve 20 uk airports, including a small O&D long haul operation at MAN?

        • Throwawayname says:

          26 Dec26 December 20:14

          Lufthansa operate their own COACHES with through ticketing where the train isn’t a viable option, and their multi-hub strategy gives passengers the opportunity to fly from basically any German airport to virtually anywhere in the world, whereas Iberia don’t even fly to BHX. The LH network has about as much similarity to the BA split hub operation as Santa Claus has to the steam engine.

• Chris R says:

  26 Dec26 December 11:52

  As a route in isolation, I can understand why BA would rather focus on higher yielding routes than a domestic. However surely there’s an economies of scale benefit from the feeder traffic. On our last family trip GLA-LGW-MCO there were 60 connecting passengers doing the same thing. Removing this route wipes out MCO or other leisure routes with BA unless LHR gains some (which obviously won’t happen due to slot constraints)

• Rupert says:

  27 Dec27 December 19:52

  FNC frequencies have been reduced for August 2025 down to 5 per week from a daily services.

• Chris says:

  28 Dec28 December 09:26

  Being Glasgow-based, we’ve done a lot of leisure routes connecting through Gatwick. Admittedly those are often on Avios which I earn from Business travel.

  If they kill the GLA-LGW then BA is no longer a desireable option. Travel between LHR and LGW is horrendous. I’d be inclined to give up on my Avios earning and switch to other airlines/alliances for my long haul bisiness travel. From Glasgow we are served very well by KLM, Emirates & Lufthansa, You can get pretty much anywehere in the world with easy connections for both Business and Leisure.

• Ian says:

  28 Dec28 December 13:52

  BA has been paring back its regional airport schedules for years while spreading its flights to Europe on a seemingly random basis between various airports in South East England which have few if any connections from the other regional airports. A more rational approach is probably too much to expect from an airline whose ‘management’ for years have been more preoccupied with cost cutting than good service – brunches being the latest daft idea.

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