This forthcoming April, British Airways will be back on the Heathrow route for the first time since 1980. (Air UK operated from 1980 until 1998 and Flybe for a brief period in 2019-20. There was a gap of 22 years).
Aurigny, as expected, are not best pleased. Why doesn’t that surprise me? On the BBC local news the other night, Charlie McArdle quoted one of them as saying that ‘we expect the service to fail’. We want the service to fail more like. Is it because you want to protect your London monopoly and you are afraid of competition?
BA operate exclusively from Terminal 5, so no changing terminals if you are travelling onwards with them. They have a huge network of destinations to all over the world, otherwise there are plenty of other carriers offering services from Terminals 2, 3 and 4. In fact Heathrow has more international carriers than any other airport in the world. Gatwick just simply doesn’t have the international destinations it once did. National Express charge £56 return from Gatwick to Heathrow. That’s a large chunk to add on.
Business people still have Gatwick and London City, so no worries there, and anyway a lot of them use the likes of Vistajet, Netjets and numerous other corporate operators that we see here and (I can only but assume) a lot of them work from home these days.
If you’re not happy with BA’s fares (or Aurigny’s come to that) – don’t go.
As far as I am concerned, one lunchtime service is a fair compromise – take it or leave it.
I wish them well.
Anthony Carre
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