Not sure RYR will like this. Bloodbath?

British Airways launches flights from London Stansted

Flights to Faro, Malaga, Palma and Ibiza

On reflection it appears to be a 4 x weekly flights hardly worth bothering.

Good win for Stansted. Wonder if this is just the start of something bigger?

Flights operate as follows

Saturdays
STN - IBZ
06:45 - 10:15
IBZ - STN
11:00 - 12:30
STN - AGP
13:15 - 17:15
AGP - STN
18:00 - 19:50
STN - PMI
20:45 - 00:15
PMI - STN
01:00 - 02:30

Sunday morning
STN - FAO
05:40 - 08:30
FAO - STN
09:05 - 12:00

So yeh just the Saturday/early Sunday before heading back to base at LCY

Surely this is just some sort of "statement" aimed at LCY given the current spat over the sale and potential charge increases. Didn't they used to do this years ago when LCY closed at the weekend?

Typically, transavia turn up at Luton with 1 route and no air raft and it's an amazing coup.

British Airways do a deal at stansted for four routes and it's a bit rubbish and is only because they want to deal somewhere else blah blah blah.

Nobody will even notice.

What's this all about ???

Well that is two of us that is confused.

Going back to BA Express at Stansted I wonder if this will be a full service operation at a full service price to set it apart from the low cost carriers?

I get exactly what whitelighter mentions above, as I'm sure anyone on the outside who follows these threads would.

As soon as Luton secures a new route and/or airline, there's a whole influx of responses to the announcement (mostly pipe dreams) that usually consist of; what route is next?, if said airline will expand and base at Luton in future? In fact all it takes is an aircraft from a foreign carrier to go into the hanger at Luton for maintenance and it'll follow with rumours posted of possible new routes the airline might fly etc etc...

The problem is there are quite a few of you who follow Luton 'Airport' like it's a football team, and by doing so behave like some obsessive and badly behaved supporters who like nothing more than to pi$$ on the parade where and whenever positive news stories/expansion and new routes happen elsewhere. Especially is the case of those at that happen at Stansted and Southend in particular. Do you see the Stansted fans behave like this with the Southend bunch? No? Thought not.

Now Luton have done very well of late. Do you see any of the Stansted regulars pi$$ing on your parade or turning this BA announcement into pages of thread devoted to the possibility of BA basing 10x A380's in Essex running multiple services to the likes of NYC, HKG, SYD, DXB etc... No? Right again.

Perhaps some of you need to grow up a bit and appreciate positivity on both sides of the fence. Your on-line behaviour and devotion to 'Bedfordshire International' became tiresome a long time ago.

This to me says well and truly that the old favourites are very much back in fashion for 2016. BA obviously see the need for extra capacity, I'm guessing the LGW fleet is already maxed out and the Scope agreement prohibits Citiflyer operating form there AFAIK. LCY is shut, STN it is. I think there will be at least five airlines flying STN-PMI on Saturdays.

OK may be I am reading too much into this - however this is a real (and very public) concern for BA at the moment and history shows they use every combination of strategies to defend their interests.

What makes me suspicious of a double motive is the timing - why wait until now to announce it when peak holiday booking season is January? is the service an afterthought or is the timing more deliberate?

Nice little addition to Stansted, very similar to their operations at IOM, ABZ, GLA and EDI, Can easily see it growing in the future. Expect it'll be a bit of a shock for the FA's used to the business pax out of LCY to them operate a Saturday night Ibiza....

I have to agree with you there. Much of the speculation about potential new routes, which are usually wish lists, just devalues the Luton thread.

Well I hope you are not including me in that comment but I do wonder what has got you so hot under the collar as none of what you would call the Luton regulars apart from me has even commented on BA at Stansted and I was 100% positive.:(

LTNman
 

Actually in fairness to LTNman he is one of the most balanced of Luton fans, and is often congratulatory or stansted news while often trying to calm and rationalise the Luton hype some are so prone to.

Genuinely a balanced and reasonable poster who obviously has a Luton eye but having a favourite is no bad thing

Not a huge advance. A couple of Cityflyer E190s are "locked in" at LCY during the Sat/Sun shutdown, this just positions one of them out to do something useful. BA Cityflyer typically have quite a bit of the capacity on their Mediterranean summer routes tied up through small specialist holiday operators.

Having used the LCY-PMI service a couple of times now, including this last summer, it was a pleasant operation far removed from the traditional Med charter operators, and not a huge difference in price. LCY check-in, 2+2 seating, 34" pitch, hot meals, full bar service, it really is like C class. I did feel it was a hard grind for just two cabin crew doing all that for 99 seats, including a C cabin. Someone once said it seemed to be pretty much the same pax (or at least the parents), off on family hols, who the crews saw out of LCY the rest of the year on the regular schedules. Notably at PMI this last summer on a Friday morning there was not only the LCY flight but also BA E190 charters to both Glasgow and Edinburgh departing all together, with the three aircraft lined up abreast on the ramp; it would have made an interesting PR photo with the Majorcan mountain backdrop.

The charters are normally just Sat and morning Sunday, but in July/August when business travel drops the likes of LCY-Edinburgh is reduced, especially on Friday mornings, when business travel is always thin, and the capacity is usefully redeployed on these Mediterranean routes. Come the Autumn things move back to the regular Edinburgh, Frankfurt, Zurich etc financial world shuttle flights.

To be fair LTNman I find your views pretty well balanced these days and your posts are a good read. However some of your airport's fan club need to get a serious grip. I'd like to say let's move on from this here but it won't change, as it never has on here unfortunately.

Hasn't Michael O'Leary of FR been predicting a bloodbath for years?

MOL preicts a bloodbath every few months.