Originally Posted by
Wycombe
The word I read on another thread is that a large Corporate client stopped using the route.
They (a well known major bank) haven't stopped using the route, but they did an initial long term purchase agreement for a percentage of the seats, which actually bankrolled (pardon the pun) the initial purchase of the aircraft and the setup costs. That agreement has come to an end, and their requirement to travel between the two centres has reduced. It did, towards the end, cause an element of dissatisfaction for those bank staff who lived west of London (as a goodly number do, commuting in daily to Canary Wharf via Waterloo station and the Underground), to have to go all the way in to LCY for the morning departure rather than using Heathrow, just to keep the numbers up on what had been committed to.
Both A318s are still active, they seem to do alternate months on the single rotation.
I've probably witnessed many hundreds of touchdowns at LCY by various types (including a couple by my long-ago PPL instructor !) and in various conditions, they all seem to come straight down the line. We probably have more go-arounds than places elsewhere, but it's all a straightforward operation.
As a result the afternoon service did not have the same appeal
Actually it did, among the users. The staff who used the service tended to be those of greater seniority, who lived out in nice houses in the Home Counties rather than the flats around Canary Wharf. Thus it was a nuisance, along the lines described above, to pack and come in to the office for just an hour or so before heading to the airport. The afternoon flight allowed a good day's work/meetings/trip preparation before heading off. For the morning flight, by the time you got from JFK to Wall Street, things were coming to an end for the day there, given the US office propensity to both start and finish notably earlier than in the UK (many are in by 7am but gone by 4.30pm),