Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

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

Links on Head for Points may support the site by paying a commission.  See here for all partner links.

Another four short-haul routes seem to be have been axed from the Summer 2025 British Airways schedule.

It doesn’t seem to be much more than the usual tweaking although it is of course very frustrating for anyone with a booking.

The biggest issue is the potential closure of Gatwick to Glasgow.

British Airways Club Europe

Heathrow cancellations

From Heathrow, two routes have disappeared from ba.com for Summer 2025:

  • Kos, Greece
  • Pula, Croatia

It’s not a major disaster for travellers to Kos, because the route is also operated by BA Euroflyer from Gatwick.

I’m not sure what rebooking options have been given for Pula. A search for Pula on ba.com now brings up a BA flight to Zagreb followed by a long wait (I saw a day with a seven hour layover!) for a connection on Croatia Airlines. Unfortunately, on some days the Croatia Airlines flight has a stopover in Zadar which turns it into a lengthy trip.

Gatwick cancellations

Two Greek routes have also disappeared from Gatwick:

  • Mykonos
  • Santorini

Both of these routes are also flown from Heathrow so there should not be any major disruption for passengers.

Is Glasgow to Gatwick being cancelled?

It is possible that the British Airways route from Glasgow to Gatwick is being considered for cancellation.

There are no dates that I could find after 22nd March where seats from Gatwick to Glasgow are available for less than £264 one way in Euro Traveller.

This is usually what we see when a route is being considered for cancellation, because it puts people off booking without having to remove the flight from the booking system. Let’s see.


How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (February 2025)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

Get 5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

30,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £15,000 Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

50,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large fee Read our full review

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, and the standard card is FREE. Capital on Tap cards also have no FX fees.

Capital on Tap Visa

NO annual fee, NO FX fees and points worth 1 Avios per £1 Read our full review

Capital on Tap Pro Visa

10,500 points (=10,500 Avios) plus good benefits Read our full review

There is also a British Airways American Express card for small businesses:

British Airways American Express Accelerating Business

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

American Express Business Platinum

50,000 points when you sign-up and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

Comments (119)

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

  • chelseafifi says:

    I received an email of time changes to my Kos flights, the Sun return was originally 15.00-17.00 now changed to 21.05-23.05, I’ll probably cut the holiday by one day and return on the afternoon Sat flight now as I avoid these return times.
    On another Kos trip I have LHR flights, they are still showing in list of my bookings and not received any cancellation emails from BA yet, they are probably waiting until Xmas Eve, like last year when they cancelled my Zante May flights.

  • 787driver says:

    I’ve just had a change to my Virgin flights so it’s not just BA doing it today

  • Jimbo says:

    BA has a monopoly on Glasgow to LHR. If they pull the LGW now it’ll be extremely inconvenient and expensive for pax from Glasgow. To fly to cut.

    • Jonny Price says:

      They don’t have a monopoly at all – for those flying from Glasgow to London, there is easyJet and Ryanair (never mind the train and road!) and for those customers travelling from Glasgow and connecting in London onto other destinations, competition is provided by numerous other hubs in Europe and the Middle East that have services to Glasgow. Cancelling the one per day Glasgow to Gatwick flight (which I believe is primarily there for people connecting to BA’s long haul flights from Gatwick) will not push fares up at all. It’ll just redirect those connecting passengers via other hubs or on direct flights from Glasgow.

  • Mike says:

    The double daily to Thessaloniki has been dropped as well, in fact they’re now not operating on certain dates at all from Gatwick which means 100s of family holiday rebooking. There are the Heathrow flights as well, but they operate the same day! Chaos.

  • Olly Loosemore says:

    Don’t they have to keep the slots as a UK route though?

    • DW says:

      There appears to be a lot of slot sitting happening with Euroflyer and JER

      • Nick says:

        There’s plenty of slot sitting going on, but not JER.

        Slots are not restricted to domestic/other operation, so no it doesn’t have to be domestic (unless it’s a remedy slot, but that doesn’t apply here).

  • RC says:

    BA proving to be unreliable. These changes are a problem if you have a car parking, hotels etc booked around them.
    The airline seems utterly incapable of public schedule it will actually fly, incapable of flying the then changed schedule without cancellation, then incapable of flying what is left in a vaguely punctual way.
    In the past Avios use might have compensated a bit, but since the massive devaluation in earnings and coming dynamic devaluation in using them, not even this makes up the difference. Better off going to Stansted for a reliable service on Jet2.

    • Bervios says:

      +1 for Jet2 running a reliable operation. I’ve just had a 4th Lufthansa schedule change for the Norway to Kenya flights that mentioned on here for May so it’s not just BA.

      • JDB says:

        Mainline airlines like BA/LH run vastly more complex businesses/schedules than Jet2 and these changes (and there are many additions as well as cancellations) affect far less than 5% of the schedule, so while it’s a real pain for those affected, not many people actually are. This is just real life!

        If you think BA is bad on this front, try US airlines!

        • Novice says:

          I had the misfortune of using Jet2 once for a return but never again. The flight was 50% drunks who were getting more drinks from hostesses who were more than happy to give it to them. And then the drunks had formed a massive queue for the toilets and ppl in the aisle had to put up with the BS, one of which I was.

        • meta says:

          But we are not in the US. We are in the UK/Europe. We should at least thrive to be better.

          My flight to Riga in June has also been retimed from morning till afternoon and messes the whole trip so have to go a day early. It’s the seems the whole schedule for almost every single flight is affected.

          BA should put a red warning for any flights booked in advance that the schedule might change. That would at least be honest, but BA is not an honest airline so there we have it.

          • Mikeact says:

            ‘Not an honest airline?’ What rubbish from a regular…very surprised. It’s easy to put a red flag against all your up coming flights if you’re that concerned. You have to work on the premise……you want to use public transport, wherever, whenever, then be prepared for any eventuality, and not just in the UK.

    • Matarredonda says:

      Easyjet and Ryanair just as bad with changes which make booking well in advance of flying a lottery let alone the usual added costs of changing varhire, etc all of which is a pain in the arsenal.

  • Tony says:

    It definitely seems like gatwick is just for southerners, it is nearly impossible now to get to gatwick from a northern airport for an international connection, other than using easyjet, which then of course means you are not on the same ticket with the usual problems if your inbound is late

  • AA says:

    Killing GLA-LGW makes no sense. They should be increasing service rather than reducing. If they kill this then it’s simply playing into EasyJet’s hands. It’s already a joke that there are so few BA flights from Glasgow and none at all from Edinburgh into LGW.

    • Londonsteve says:

      It probably reflects commercial reality, that Scottish travellers are electing to fly via the Middle East or with European legacy carriers, transiting in mainland Europe. If there was a strong commercial case for maintaining the connection I doubt they’d drop it. I appreciate that this is chicken and egg; how can Scottish flyers use LGW if there aren’t any connecting flights? They can’t, but the yield on the last remaining connection was probably too poor. This is as much about the convenience and comfort of transiting in Europe/Middle East as it is about poor service and indequate connecting flights from BA.

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

The UK's biggest frequent flyer website uses cookies, which you can block via your browser settings. Continuing implies your consent to this policy. Our privacy policy is here.