Originally Posted by
AvGeek1
I was thinking about British Airways' Gatwick operation and how they are increasing their presence, with many new routes including Seville, Valencia, New York, Porto, etc, being added either recently or in the upcoming months. I was thinking about routes they could operate in the future and this is what I came up with:
Gatwick-Dublin (an early 7am-8am could compliment other EI services, plus another evening service.)
Gatwick-Gran Canaria (Spanish tourism booming at the moment and could operate year-round, could replace Sharm el Sheikh)
Gatwick-Palma de Mallorca (Spanish tourism booming, one of the busiest routes from Gatwick in the summer)
Gatwick-Berlin Tegel
Gatwick-Milan Malpensa (I have always wondered, why BA operate both LIN & MXP from LHR. Surely they could operate LIN from LHR for business traffic and MXP from LGW for leisure traffic. Connecting traffic wouldn't suffer as they have LIN to connect. It would also free up a few slots at LHR.)
Gatwick-Paris CDG
Gatwick-Miami
The issue with Milan is that the main airport there these days is MXP. LIN which I used last year is much smaller so fewer if any connection opportunities.
I agree about routes like Berlin which could do well for BA from LGW and even Paris which was once dead in the water after Eurostar arrived, now seems to be recovering with new routes from LGW & LTN recently. Maybe BA could make it work again? The question is, so they want to step on the toes of Vueling who are doing the CDG route?
Miami is an interesting choice. It's a route that surely has leisure potential for any long hail operator and thus could work from LGW.
With the decline in the Egypt and probably Turkish tourist routes this year, the likes of Spain and Portugal could benefit so routes like PMI may well see an upturn which BA could take advantage of.
If BA plan carefully, they in conjunction with Vueling could begin to develop an operation at LGW which starts to seriously rival EZY