Who is chartering Jet2 to ENF ? In the past it's usually been Enter Air flying people to visit Santa for a day or with a deep desire to go on long trips with huskies... have Enter Air lost the business ?
The area around ENF has a *very* low population density

Not sure but somebody has clearly and its good that a UK carrier is getting the business after a difficult 2 years. There are just a few ENF's loaded and as you said, they will be Santa trips one imagines. On a bad news day its good to see Jet2 coming to LGW for winter and who knows if this could blossom into something more off the back of today's news.

vectisman

yes programme for lgw for the winter

Thank you for confirming.

Neilson have Turin and Toulouse on sale via their website, not sure on the others.

ImagineIf

How exactly is FCO a ski/lapland destination?

From the Sky report: "...will pursue alternative uses for the London Gatwick short-haul slots."

It doesn't look as though BA is about to gift the LGW market to EZY and WZZ, so some options for IAG are:
Operating a few services as BA mainline with fares to match.
Bringing in an IAG airline to take over some or all the routes, and remember it's not just Vueling, they also now own Air Europa. They could also use Aer Lingus, Iberia Express and/or Iberia mainline.
Leasing the slots out to someone who isn't a challenger, like Jet2.
Putting the BA name on a new franchisee set up to operate the services.

mariofly12

Is it FDH perhaps? That has been operated in the recent past.

mariofly12

That's not what it says.

Has the air europa deal even gone through?

How many long-haul departures do these flight typically feed? It must be quite a few if it makes sense to BA to offer 300 or so seats from MAN/GLA purely for LGW longhaul feed ( I assume that in the past a lot of non-domestic short-haul flights now axed also provided some feed for the longhaul flights and were not purely P2P)

It's mainly aimed at LGW-Pakistan for connecting to the Manchester and Glasgow diaspora, PIA were huge at MAN but are currently barred from UK airspace for safety violations.
Quite why BA feel the need to pick up Qatar's dropped LGW route by moving their own LHR service to LGW I genuinely can't guess at.

mariofly12

I said seasonal charter, ski & lapland. I'm aware there is no skiing in Rome or Santa for that matter. So I guess Rome fits into the seasonal charter bracket, maybe its a private charter for a company, sports related or a short city break. 🙃

Skipness One Foxtrot

Isn't it a joint venture on LON-DOH between the two so it doesn’t matter who operates it the costs and profits are shared?

I have some difficulties understanding the wisdom to operate 300 feeder seats from GLA and MAN to LGW just to fill a 400 or so seat aircraft there for a single route...? Wouldn't it make more sense for all involved to do a W-pattern with MAN on alternating days...? Probably it would, but if you are London Airways...

The same domestics also feed other BA long-hauls at Gatwick including Caribbean, Tampa, Punta Cana, Cancun, MoBay and Kingston. Although Islamabad is presumably important, I can't see this is exclusively to feed Islamabad.

Before Pakistan went on the red list, BA were, I’m informed, one week away from starting direct MAN-ISB direct. So it may be revisited.

If they were launching in winter to feed winter sun EDI would surely be back before MAN.
Quite right about LGW-DOH but I don't see the sense in replacing a B788 with a much larger B772 when LHR-DOH isn't even back up to capacity. It's a funny one, maybe home working has allowed some ideas to be piloted that would be dismissed beforehand, or maybe something in the BA/QR codeshare mandates this, scratch that, I have no idea. (The usual then :) )

BA served MAN-ISB for ages on the B747-200, BA119 / 118 and latterly BA2119 / 2118 (?) were the LGW-MAN-ISB-MAN-LGW rotations, they even had B747-400s into Stand 44 at T3 for a time.

virginblue

I think you may be underestimating the number of pax who use the ME3 from MAN to get to the east. BA are trying to get in on the act, finally.

Emirates back on December 10th. EK15/16 with the 77W.

Great news 😀

Anyone know if Jet2 are basing aircraft at LGW for their winter charters, or if they’ll be served from other bases?

Served from other bases? I presume you mean fly it in let's say night before they operate, do the series of charters, then fly it back out the day after back to base?

I think they'll fly one or two at the beginning of the charter's. If required elsewhere they could position it or swap it in the destination.

aircraft being based at LGW by the sounds of it. A few might fly in and out a few times a week but primarily based. Up to 4 aircraft apparently for their charter series.

Seems a very good idea as not as many aircraft required at each base in winter.

vectisman

You’re right. I’m one of them. I live just a few miles from Gatwick and wouldn’t consider Heathrow unless for long haul.

I usually fly BA where I can, have a stupid amount of avios but still the convenience of flying from Gatwick outweighs ‘brand loyalty’. I would always pay that bit more to fly BA rather than a LOCO. Maybe silly, but not everyone wants bargain basement prices and the scrum that comes with it.

recently went away where I could have used avios from LHR but instead switched airlines to fly from LGW. That’s just me but how many others are there that are prepared to do the same? BA will obviously know more about this than me but for them to claim they were unprofitable is surely a bit disingenuous.

Interesting to look at the CAA passenger data as we reach the end of furlough. Relative to August 19, for the market as a whole, August 21 traffic was standing at 27.5% ( 8.54m versus 30.87m). In league table terms, Belfast (both airports) was at the top with 48% ; Luton with 41%, Liverpool at 38%, most of the rest including Heathrow spread out between 25 and 33% with Gatwick an outlier at 20%. Recovery under way but a long way to go.

Jet 2
 

arfortune

Canterbury Travel are doing lapland flights late nov into dec using jet 2

Now being reported that BA and BALPA are in talks about Gatwick. More detail tomorrow apparently. Could be interesting. New ballot planned.

And Hotelplan (Inghams, Santa’s Lapland etc); we’re travelling with them on 19/12!

From the Telegraph:.....A spokesman for British Airways said: “Our short-haul operation at Gatwick was consistently unprofitable and we were clear that we could not re-start short-haul flights unless we were able to establish a competitive platform.

“While we have been actively pursuing alternative uses for our slots, last week Balpa asked us to resume discussions. These talks were constructive, addressed key concerns and have secured the efficiencies required. Balpa is now taking a new proposal to its members.”

Sun Express now have Dalaman on sale as well as Ayt. Will we see more routes from them? Is this a sign that they are moving from Ltn?

Air Malta is also now planning to return to Gatwick in December with 3 flights weekly. Originally it was going to be Summer 2022.
Air Malta Gatwick flights in Summer 2022 will be daily.

Jet2 is also advertising for Passenger Services staff for its Gatwick Winter charter services. Period of employment is from November 1st 2021 to early April 2022. Be interesting to see if they plan anything for next Summer. Not saying its likely, but not impossible.

If British Airways goes ahead re-introducing short haul at Gatwick next Summer with the previously suggested 17 SH aircraft, they will still not require all the slots they were using in Summer 2019 (About 90 slot pairs) Both the long haul and short operation would require about 60 or more slot pairs (depending on the length of the planned short haul routes) so there would be some that could initially be leased out. The original plan was to increase the fleet by 3 or 4 SH units a year for several years, so longer term would need all of their slots.
Of course they may have plans for other IAG airlines to use some of them.

Again possible that Jet2 could be interested. However, they would surely want them long term and would be another competitor for the BA operation. Could be interesting.

At the moment looking like BA long haul at Gatwick will need about 8 777s from December rising to 11 777s next Summer. All this could change depending on demand. However at the moment bookings to places like Caribbean, Cancun and Mauritius are very strong. There may even be some Orlando services from Gatwick this winter owing to increased demand.

Obviously still a way to go when compared to Summer 2019 (15 777s and up to 32 SH aircraft). However, much better than 2020 and 2021! Hopefully BA short haul will return. Much more optimistic than I was 2 weeks ago!

Why has Wizzair not made more of an effort to get started again at Lgw? For an airline that has said so much about their intentions for Lgw, I find their current strategy odd? Travel is starting to re-cover, but they seem to be making little effort at Lgw. They were also successful in gaining a lot more slots, yet they are making little effort to use them. They do seem happy to get Ltn going again however.

bycrewlgw. The problem with profit for BA at Gatwick was the seasonality of the most of the short haul route network. I believe long haul from Gatwick has been profitable for a number of years. Some of the
long haul destinations served continue to be very lucrative. Short haul was profitable in the summer, but made losses in the winter owing to the seasonal nature of the operation. In recent years years they tried to overcome
this by increasing Winter Sports destinations, the Christmas markets and increased flying for ski operators and the Lapland charters. However these were not enough. You had enough staff for the summer but too many for the winter.

If BA Gatwick had been allowed to compete with the BA Heathrow operation in terms of routes, there may have been less of a seasonal issue.

If an European route became too successful it went back to Heathrow. Examples are Bologna in Italy, Luxembourg and Barcelona.(Barcelona was a split operation for a while then went back to being solely Heathrow). Some destinations could support duel operation such as Amsterdam and some domestics. Geneva could have worked all year round at Gatwick but was only allowed to operate there from December to April (Ski season) to prevent dilution of the Heathrow yields.

I believe the 'new' short haul operation allows for more seasonal contracts for crews and ground staff that should help reduce/avoid the winter losses. For example, full time employment in the Summer, maybe 50% in the winter, plus other combinations. We shall have to see how things develop.

Seasonal variation has been less of an issue for the long haul operation. Less Florida for example could be made up in Winter by more to the Caribbean and destinations like Mauritius and at one time Male.

True Blue. Which slots did Wizzair manage to acquire? I would imagine that Ryanair, EasyJet and Wizzair are a little disappointed that the BA slots at Gatwick may now not be available!

According to the last 2/3 slot reports, they have managed to acquire some additional slots, did they not? I can understand why they didn't operate them in 2020 and most of 2021. But should they not be trying a little bit harder at Lgw if they want a 20 aircraft base there?

True Blue. Many thanks for the information. If BA short haul returns and succeeds I cant see a 20 aircraft Wizzair base in the short term (or even longer). I can see both EasyJet and BA competing hard to
prevent one too! Such a large base would need 40 to 50 daily slot pairs. I am not sure that, even after the pandemic, in Summer 2022 there would be that many available. However I could be wrong!

British Airways and future long haul at LGW
 

News RE. BA short haul resumption at LGW is definitely positive and encouraging, and will prove to be a strategically valuable decision going forward, especially as aviation continues to bounce back and LHR fills back up. I'm also sure that BA management are very mindful about what happened last time when LGW was de-hubbed and the subsequent expansion of EZY/take over of GB Airways. Hopefully this will also mean that the South terminal is one step closer to reopening- have there been any indications of when the terminal might reopen?

Also, any updates on China Airlines possibly returning to LGW for the winter? The LGW airline and terminal page still lists CI, but wasn't sure if they're remaining at LHR? Hopefully LGW can begin to attract more long haul back that it had pre-Covid.