Starting in May 2024, British Airways will return to London Stansted Airport with weekend flights to three holiday destinations. With that, the airline will be back to having a presence at four London airports. Continue reading to learn more...
Starting in May 2024, British Airways will return to London Stansted Airport with weekend flights to three holiday destinations. With that, the airline will be back to having a presence at four London airports.
Continue reading to learn more about the routes.
British Airways will use City Airport-based E190s on the new routes. (Credit: British Airways)
Upcoming British Airways’ Weekend London Stansted Flights
Oneworld member British Airways plans to return to London Stansted Airport from May 18, 2024, when it will launch three seasonal routes to destinations in Italy, Spain, and France. All three routes will be operated just once a week using BA Cityflyer’s London City-based Embraer 190s.
In Italy, British Airways will serve Florence with the following schedule:
BA7016 / Florence – London Stansted / 2:15PM – 4:30PM / Sat BA7017 / London Stansted – Florence / 6:30AM – 8:45AM / SunIn France, British Airways will serve Nice with the following schedule:
BA2332 / Nice – London Stansted / 9:20AM – 11:20AM / Sat BA2333 / London Stansted – Nice / 6:55AM – 8:55AM / SunLastly, in Spain, British Airways will serve Ibiza with the following schedule:
BA7308 / Ibiza – London Stansted / 9:35AM – 12:05PM / Sat BA7309 / London Stansted – Ibiza / 12:50PM – 3:15PM / Sun
British Airways’ summer 2024 London Stansted routes. (Map generated using Great Circle Mapper)
One thing you may notice is that rather than originating in London, the flights originate at the destinations.
The reason behind this is the operating hours of London City Airport. The airport is closed for a good portion of weekends, most notably from 1PM on Saturday to 11AM on Sunday. British Airways is simply taking aircraft that would otherwise be sitting on the ground and trying to squeeze some extra profit out of them.
In other words, the aircraft will fly from London City to the destination on Saturday morning, then to London Stansted and back to the destination over the weekend, and finally back to London City on Sunday.
British Airways will offer both business (Club Europe) and economy (Euro Traveller) classes on the flights.
This will not be the first time for British Airways to operate scheduled flights out of London Stansted. The airline tried a similar approach in 2016. That said, gradually, the airline scaled those operations down and it hasn’t operated out of London Stansted since the start of the pandemic.
British Airways Will Face Plenty of Competition on the Routes
With the three cities that British Airways chose to serve out of London Stansted being popular holiday destinations, it should come as no surprise that the airline will face strong competition on all three routes.
The airline is betting on its ability to attract enough customers to cover its operating costs and then some – after all, the aircraft would be sitting on the ground otherwise and aircraft sitting on the ground do not make money.
Two of the destinations are served by other airlines from London Stansted. The low-cost giant Ryanair has flights to Ibiza and Nice. Additionally, Ibiza is also served by Jet2 and TUI Airways.
All three destinations are also served from other London airports. British Airways connects all three cities with Heathrow. It also flies from Gatwick to Nice and Ibiza.
Additionally:
Air France (SkyTeam) flies from Heathrow to Nice EasyJet flies from Gatwick and Luton to Nice and from Gatwick to Ibiza TUI Airways flies from Gatwick to Ibiza Vueling flies from Gatwick to Florence Wizz Air flies from Gatwick to Nice
The destinations are already served out of London by other airlines including Ryanair and easyJet.
Summary
Ultimately, these three routes will not have any significant impact on British Airways’ bottom line. After all, they will only operate once a week. That said, if British Airways can fill them enough to cover operating costs, then it has nothing to lose since the aircraft would otherwise just be sitting on the ground unable to operate in/out of their London City base.
It will be interesting to see how well the flights do and if they will return the following summer. While the three holiday destinations are extremely popular, they are also all served by multiple flights from London each day. Some are even served out of Stansted already.
The post British Airways Gives London Stansted Another Try, Plans Holiday Routes in Summer 2024 appeared first on KN Aviation.