Originally Posted by
FlyGatwick
Vistara, as according to airline schedule analyst Sean Moulton, they seem to no longer have access to the five weekly slot pairs they're currently using at Heathrow to fly to / from Mumbai. They could potentially transfer this service to Gatwick, making use of the five weekly additional slot pairs ACL awarded sister airline Air India for this summer season, at least in the interim until Air India has decided whether they're going to reinstate their originally planned Gatwick-Bengaluru service.
Further to my previous comments in this regard, I believe another potential short-haul addition for LGW could be Brussels Airlines.
The reason I'm saying this is in connection with reports of them, their parent, the Lufthansa group and United Airlines (according to some reports Air Canada as well) conducting negotiations about turning Brussels Airlines' BRU base into a global hub for North America - Africa air travel given that an extensive Africa network is Brussels Airlines' USP for obvious historical reasons and that these routes don't appear to be profitable at the moment due to a lack of feeder traffic at BRU. Building up BRU into a hub specialising in Africa connections makes strategic sense for the Lufthansa group given its relative weakness in Africa, especially LH itself in this part of the world vis-à-vis competitors. Ditto for UA / AC given the scarcity of direct flights between North America and Africa. The relevant media reports also quoted the LH group CEO saying that there currently is insufficient short-haul feeder traffic at BRU for Brussels Airlines' African routes to be profitable all-year round, and that this is something that needed addressing as well. Given the extreme shortage of slots at LHR and that the prices these command are far in excess of the profitability additional frequencies on a short-haul feeder route like LHR-BRU can realistically be expected to generate, even under a best-case scenario, IMO this makes it likely that Brussels Airlines would be looking to expand their LON-BRU capacity at LGW if this is what they choose to do (probably in addition to expanding their footprint in the UK regions outside London) to feed additional passengers onto its long-haul flights to Africa at BRU. What IMO would favour Brussels Airlines' resumption of an LGW-BRU feeder route as well is that unlike AMS and CDG / ORY (as well as BCN, FCO and VCE), similar to FRA and ZRH, BRU is not a typical European tourist magnet to attract high-frequency competition from LCCs / ULCCs like easyJet, Ryanair and Wizz.