Originally Posted by
Kiltrash
For what reason does the BA A318 from JFK to London City always seem to divert to Gatwick when there are weather issues at City??
Possible reasons are
No available slots at Heathrow?
Better connection from Gatwick to the City?
Southend not seen as posh enough for the executives?
The crew are based at Gatwick. Each day they report there and are driven by road to LCY, and take the flight as far as Shannon, where the pilots slip overnight, taking the next day's plane onwards to JFK.
This actually covers very efficiently a number of scenarios, but if LCY is fogged-in for the early morning inbound (not unknown
), the crew are already at Gatwick, their taxi is cancelled and they ferry the aircraft over to LCY later in the morning (when it usually clears up) and then go on to Shannon. There are no BA crew at Southend to handle this. The slip at Shannon helps as doing such the ferry to LCY, then flying to SNN, then on to JFK, would be outside flight time limits.
Given that crews are (very simplistically) rostered and paid by the flying hour, the crew costs are not increased as some might think. The cabin crew work on a separate basis as they are not required for the ferry from LGW to LCY, and thus report to LCY and work through to JFK.
There is also a very efficient operation springs into action by Special services at Gatwick to whisk the inbound diverted pax by car to wherever they are going around London, to minimise their delay.