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