Looks like the whole fleet's coming back - 5 arrived from Norwich so far, and LCYO inbound from Warsaw where it's been for a check.

Why? When are they aiming to re-launch? Could it be that BA will prefer a small LCY operation where social distancing can be better managed than at LHR for example? (smaller aircraft, smaller crowds etc?)

Interesting comment from Willie Walsh at the end of this article:

https://www.independent.ie/business/...-39189863.html

1st June they plan to come back with a limited schedule.

Could the mothballing of the Excel Nightingale hospital have anytthing perhaps to do with the subsequent return of based aircraft back to LCY ?

Quote:

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Mr Walsh also said that London City Airport - where Dublin-based CityJet had been operating a route on behalf of Aer Lingus - has been challenged. CityJet is in examinership. "It's an expensive airport to operate, it's a very niche airport, so I suspect that it will be the last airport to recover in the London market," he said.

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Leave off Willie - I'll be on a number of business trips from there long before I expect to be trudging over to Heathrow again.

WW mentions the Cityjet operation for Aer Lingus without any mention of the BA Cityflyer route LCY to Dublin, which has pretty much become the dominant operator on the route. I wonder if from IAG Towers he even knows BA run it.

He’s just pushing to cut the fees. LCY needs BA now so he’ll push and push.

I’m afraid Willie might be right. If the govt pursue this idea of a 14 quarantine I simply don’t see how
routes from LCY to the EU can survive. I’ve possibly already made my last landing in LCY and of my career.

Same applies to most airports. Part of me thinks this makes the Government look like they are doing something to reassure new voter Sharon in Mansfield they’re on top of it and to give them something to say tonight. The other part of me thinks it could be a pre-emptive face-saving strike because other nations around the world won’t be willing to let Brits in. As at least one paper says, we are the problem child.

Air Antwerp
 

Air Antwerp have abandoned any plans to re-start LCY-ANR until September. Customer base is primarily business on day/short trips and due to combination of 14 day quarantine required in UK and the usual lower traffic levels during the peak Summer (imagine how low they'll be this summer anyway!), any demand has disappeared.

A distracting factor must be that, CityJet, their majority backer, continue their own fight for survival with most (all?) of the Cityjet European subsidiaries now officially bankrupt and closed.

I've had a look through the ACL report for winter 2020/2021, compared the slots granted (not just requested) and looked for route changes that have not been already announced. I must emphasise that this is based on slots granted - airlines can and sometimes do decline to take up routes, so this is only a "what might happen", not a "what wll happen". In a normal year, many of these routes would have been announced by now; I'm guessing a sizeable number of them simply won't happen:

Widerøe:
New route 13x weekly E190-E2 to Bergen. Wideroe have also been granted slots for 6x weekly E190-E2 on Gatwick - Bergen

https://www.acl-uk.org/wp-content/up...ion-Report.pdf

I'm guessing no "new routes" are going to be around for pretty much the next 12 months. By definition, such tend to be loss-making in the first year or so as they get established, and the last thing airlines need currently is further losses. So it will be downsize, mainstream routes only, and slowly build up from there.

Had heard initially that BA Cityflyer would restart at LCY on June 1, then June 22, and now the LCY website is saying "end of June", domestic only (Edinburgh/IOM/Dublin ?), with European routes starting in July.

It’s twice daily not 6 daily. It says in the later section -
“Wideroe (WF) are a new airline and are planning to operate 13x p.w. to/from Bergen”

I meant 6 weekly
6 daily from London City to Bergen would be absurd
But yes, you're right that I've divided by 2 one too many times in counting the slot allocation

As it stands, BA CityFlyer's IOM service (operated by Loganair) returns to LCY on 21 June. Then:

10 July: AGP, FLR, IBZ, NCE, PMI
12 July: DUB, EDI
13 July: AMS, GLA
31 July: MAN

Currently August still showing a full schedule but I wouldn't be surprised to see this change.

MAN ? So they will also do their leisure flying on weekends from MAN - or is this an aircraft parking exercise?

The MAN flights are still scheduled from the beginning of August (but of course this could change), as are weekend flights from STN and EDI, plus DUB-REU and DUB-FAO charters.

Since posting that, some schedule pruning has gone on:
10 July: AGP, FLR, IBZ, NCE, PMI
12 July: DUB, EDI
13 July: AMS, GLA
20 July: DUB, EDI, GLA
31 July: MAN

Really difficult for people to commit to travelling and start booking flights again if the airlines change start dates over and over again. Looks a bit like a cat and mouse play. People won't book because the schedule is not really robust and reliable - and airlines cannot offer a robusto and reliable schedule withut forward bookings.

Major airlines are back to a situation faced by startups... namely they have to run heavily loss-making flights at near empty for maybe a month... once people see them operating reliably with no major issues, they will start booking again. Of course if an airline messes around too much in that 1 month period, consumer confidence will disappear

Difficult balancing act for airlines as to how fast to add back capacity, when there is very little historic or proxy data showing demand in a post-pandemic scenario

It would be good if the LCY website made an effort to show what was going to be running, from when, updated as airlines change their plans.

As it is, the opening page is a splash about booking car parking, and the timetables section is a load of rubbish, showing flights running this week, when the airport has been closed for the last 3 months.

The premium leisure markets seems pretty resilient - very high loads to IBZ and AGP in July with many flights sold out in Economy and £700 one way in Club.

It was reported by SeanM1997 that BACF will drop the LCY-IOM route from September. I wonder if Loganair would operate it alone?

I think it may change how it’s operated rather than dropped I.e. be LCY originating with BA metal and dropping the midday flight.

I don’t believe there is a snowball in hell’s chance of them putting a jet on this. The Embraer fleet is reducing and with one more route to fit in as well, the prospect of an extra jet hull just to sit in IOM all day could not be further from the thinking.

Typically these flights were said to take the same passengers the crew recognised from the rest of the year on early mornings to Edinburgh or Frankfurt (myself included). It's a common way to burn off Avios from the rest of the year. Palma with small kids, Malaga for the Canary Wharf DINKYs (Double Income No Kids Yet), Ibiza for ... well, you all know what.

I wonder what CityFlyer will do for Club, given that Mainline at Heathrow are doing no catering at all. As the LCY Med flights have always offered a small meal and drinks in Y, the seating in the E190 is the same, there is no lounge at LCY, and many are probably Silver or higher anyway, Club has always seemed an irrelevance.

Our classic was returning on the Skiathos, lesiurely breakfast and morning swim, departing at lunchtime, into LCY at 3pm, into a cab, straight to Little Miss WHBM's school where the pre-restart day get together was beginning at 3.30, made it (!), dropped the two ladies off, self then continued to the house with the suitcases. We're all looking forward to CityFlyer coming back, all round.

It is only the morning & early afternoon services that are not running......the evening service is still running, but bear in mind that the IOM is now Covid free & they don't want it back so borders are still closed with no easing of restrictions announced, the late flight from LCY-IOM has remained running for returning residents (subject to 2 week quarantine on return) & essential workers only.

Take time. Read my original post.

LCY ORIGINATING. Ie LCY-IOM-LCY in the morning, same in the evening.

The flights have been removed from sales completely

Makes no difference. Still about as far away from happening as a service to the moon.

I think BA will look at it and think ‘how much profit can we make on this’ and if it doesn’t reach the threshold it will be chopped

I have several flights booked on the route for October and November, no notification of any changes as yet

This is extremely worrying as there are no tickets for sale from the middle of September onwards. Its very odd that this has happened given that all throughout the pandemic this flight has been operating albeit to London Heathrow once a day at one point it was only this and the Liverpool flight that were operating ( Manchester was later added). I recognise that there may be a reduction in passengers travelling but the removal of this service will be a big issue for connections into London. I do hope that the government are aware of this and ensuring that there are plans to replace with a twice a day service operated from London City on an Embraer. The loss of this is the last thing the island needs once it starts to recover.

Won’t the easyJet London services be back up and running by September?

They most likely will be, not everyone wants to get into LGW after 23.00 though and their otp is not great plus day return not really an option with the ezy schedules

Most probably but the timings of those flights have never been convenient for travel to London particularly for business. The first morning flight off the island is not until 09.55 or 10.25 and Gatwick is a much longer journey into the centre than London City. The evening flight off the island is even worse and with frequent delays it does not get back to Gatwick until circa 11.00pm.
Easyjet only use the island as a 'filler' and so put the flights on at less than optimal times and their policy to fares when Flybe went into administration resulting in charges of up to £500 return to Liverpool demonstrates how they operate!
In my opinion they are in no way the answer for serving the centre of London and providing a regular well timed service to and from London for the island.

And if there are enough people willing to pay enough money, somebody will provide it...

Probably time for Manx government and/or the local businesses to come up with a local solution just like quite a few marginal destinations in other countries have. Stuff like all those "XY-flygs" in Sweden, "Alsle" in Denmarkt, "Peoples" in Austria or "RNA" in Germany that provide links to the nation's capital by either running a small local airline or selling tickets for flights operated on their behalf by an ACMI-provider..

The difficulty with those types of virtual airline arrangements is that the UK CAA is completely allergic to them. Even the regulatory provision which allowed Manx2 then Citywing to exist has been closed off for all but the most infrequent flights. There is a resurgence of them in Sweden after the failure of FlygBRA but between a combination of airline operating licences, ATOL licences and the lack of traffic rights for non-UK carriers past the Brexit transition period, it's as certain as it can be that this type of structure will not appear in the UK (or Crown Dependencies either). You'd be into getting a full AOC and Operating Licence.

Sure. There are also concepts based on a proper small airline, e.g. PEOPLES in Austrian or Air Alsie in Denmark. They both started as one aircraft outfits and have not really grown beyond two aircraft and a single year-round, week-daily route. But it needs some propping up either by the airport (PEOPLES) or the local business community (Air Alsie).