772

The slot waiver specifically doesn’t apply here, because you have to operate some of them. An airport that you pull out of, you can’t protect the slots, for obvious reasons.

The space will be repurposed by Gatwick Airport for another tennant, I don't think it will be mothballed in readiness for any return years from now as there's no return on the money being spent. As for Virgin, they have financing til the end of the year and then if key markets are not open in volume then they're back to refinancing again. A return to LGW would be a medium term "nice to have", survival with a LHR/MAN focus is all right now.

Downwind_Left

true but, sorry what I meant was when VS left they said they would retain the slots, I believe.

if the slot waivers are abolished surely either VS either have to come straight back or give up the slots?

I would have though BA not bringing back their short haul operation would be of much bigger concern to GAL than VS not returning

Skipness One Foxtrot

the checkin area is no big deal really, the atrium/self service area of N terminal zone A was modified for VS but wouldn’t take much to make it generic again. As for their lounges in the 4th floor, not sure GAL would, as mentioned above would mothball in case VS return. On the other hand, not sure what use the 4th floor lounges would have for anyone else in the N terminal. You already have mylounge and number1 lounge, Emirates (a smaller operation) and aspire lounges on other levels

with demand lower for years to come and lack of ‘premium’ airlines, I can’t see any use for the ex VS lounges in the N terminal

772

With secondary slot trading permitted in the UK, VS can retain ownership of all of their LGW slots if they find another operator to lease them too. It might be more difficult just now, but LGW is still an attractive airport so it might be possible to do one, or multiple deals to avoid returning slots to the pool.

I don't see demand being lower for years, once vaccine is globally available beyond a certain point, most countries NEED the trade to help pay off COVID debts, perhaps with a few exceptions. But demand is clearly massive albeit pent up and many people are accumulating large cash cushions they're dying to spend. I am pretty cynical, (no really I am!) but summer 2022 should be a boom summer, if not back to 2019 levels just yet. There will likely be some panicked restrictions as seasonal virus does it's thing in winter but most of us will be vaccinated.

The key disruptor event may be with LHR slots being freed up as some companies collapse or don't return which may well restrict a return to long haul at Gatters. China Airlines really doesn't want to be at LGW for example as they're at a competitive disadvantage against EVA being at LHR. BA have not retired their A320 fleet in large numbers, if you see that happening, then look to LGW being massively downsized. The only unscheduled withdrawals thus far have been the B747-400s and the 2 LGW based B777s to Teruel for "storage". The LGW A319s are rotating through LHR to keep them active.

JobsaGoodun

thank you I wasn’t aware of that

Skipness One Foxtrot

do you know which LGW 777s are at Teruel? Assuming two of the three 4 clasS birds? Two from VIIV, VIIW, VIIY ?

Briana

interesting, I’m sure GAL would have hoped to attract Air Senegal

Can’t see it lasting at STN. Will move to LGW or LHR at some point.

That’s from last year. This hasn’t been announced for 2021.

Ex. Virgin Atlantic North Terminal check in area
 

I wonder if TUI might be relocated there (Zone A), as they have a fairly sizeable operation at LGW (once things are fully up and running again that is). Other contenders could be the yet-to-be announced Norse Atlantic operation mirroring the ex. DI network, although I suspect this is more likely to be South Terminal once it reopens. Hard to tell given the times at present, but I'm suspecting the space will be taken over by an airline with a fairly sizeable presence at the airport, given how large the check in zone/bag drop area is. It doesn't make sense logistically to have an airline permanently based there with small passenger flow while the rest of the space is unused.

Telegraph stating that BA are reviving plans to abandon LGW.

I think it would make more sense now for IAG anyway to consolidate BA wholly as the hub carrier at Heathrow, and restructure/downsize Gatwick to a Vueling base for the short-haul, point-to-point lesiure traffic. In any case, cannot see IAG wanting to let go of a significant number of their Gatwick slots longer term.

What's the point in setting up a Vueling base? They'd have to establish yet another British AOC with all the overheads and cost and spread over only one low cost base. BA LGW shares many costs with the parent, a blessing and a burden, but the days of high cost BA Gatwick are gone. If IAG want to be at LGW, BA was the AOC to use IMHO. There's not many more costs left to cut....

What this does is pressure Sean Doyle into having a business plan to take to the IAG Board they can buy into for the brave new world of post COVID. He could fight for a future at LGW but he'd need a strategy and focussed business plan. I don't think Accra or Doha were strategic moves, more like desperate tactical ones.

Maybe consolidating B777 long haul at LHR might be a halfway house to survival, with a smattering of paid off A320s based at LGW. Rename it British Airtours if you have to!

southside bobby

Dear God, please no for the sake of everyone at the airline, and of course LGW. Airports all over the world have been hit hard by this awful pandemic, but LGW in particular has taken a lot of beatings over the past year compared to some of the other London airports with the loss of VS and DI long haul. At this point I’m preying BA don’t go either- there will come a time, post pandemic, when LHR fills back up again and airlines will be looking to once again serve London. With this in mind, surely it makes sense for BA to retain their LGW base in the knowledge that if they leave, likelihood is that they won’t be able to return once air travel takes off again (I’m thinking of Wizz Air and EasyJet swooping in on their slots). Not everyone wants to have to trek down to LHR, be it for short or long haul

I think this is partly a case of Gallego wanting to own and rubber stamp the decision that Walsh made last year himself. Whilst there are definite short term difficulties the outlook is far more positive than it was at Easter and early summer last year. Given at that time Walsh made the decision to retain a presence at Gatwick, it is difficult to see what would reverse that decision given that the outlook certainly for Summer 2022 is far better (providing a modicum of sanity returns to the equation from HMG). Let’s face it though this has been very difficult to predict from day one so I very certainly could be wrong.

Don’t forget also that LGW is on its knees right now and IAG/BA may be wishing to extract further concessions, they’d be foolish not to at least try. As Skipness says above the Airbus fleet has remained largely untouched, until BA/IAG issue a press release to say we are terminating our LGW operations this is pinch of salt territory, but still enormously stressful for the remaining BA employees at Gatwick.

well this is depressing to read and also caught me a bit by surprise. I had thought having restarted ops a year ago at LGW and limping along as they have that the LGW operation may have been OK.

who knows how much of a review this is or whether it’s a done deal, only time will tell, awful news potential for LGW, the local area and the good folk at BA LGW who have been through this only a year ago

The Telegraph says that the order has come from parent company IAG – possibly implying that British Airways management is not in favour – which is paranoid about the long term impact of losing take-off and landing slots at Heathrow.

As we have covered many times on Head for Points since covid appeared, an airline has to use an airport slot on 80% of dates. If it fails to do so, the slot is automatically forfeited and made available to any other airline which wants it.

There are two slot ‘seasons’, Winter and Summer, with switchover dates in late March and late October. There are separate slot pools for each season.

Since Spring 2020, the slot rules have been suspended. With some caveats, British Airways can run as few flights as it wants at present with no risk of having the slots taken away.

At some point, possibly next Spring but almost certainly in Autumn 2022, this waiver will end.

Without a waiver, British Airways will have to start running its full pre-covid schedule or it will start to forfeit slots. This simply isn’t possible – with the retirement of the Boeing 747 fleet, I doubt it has enough aircraft to do so, even if it wanted to.

Without a slot waiver, moving British Airways flights from Gatwick to Heathrow is the easiest – and probably only – way to ensure that the airline keeps its full slot portfolio.

Luis Gallego, chief executive of IAG, reportedly told analysts last month that:

“Gatwick is an important decision that we need to take as a group. It’s true that we have the issue with the slots.

“Gatwick has some strategic value, but we need to be competitive there. This crisis is going to change the profile … of the demand. So we are analysing the different options.”

Presuming the daily LCA flights with DE are some sort of W pattern or do they have a based aircraft in Cyprus?
Didn't they operate from UK/MAN in the past alongside TCX? Lets see if it gets off the ground.

condor operating LGW-LCA?

The timings are delightful. :yuk:

Just seen it on Twitter, those timings :yuk: wow

W rotation. Oh well, a new route for LGW in these times must be welcomed!

Gatwick arrivals showing a lot of Wizz routes that maybe have been planned but never released for sale. So if the information there is in anyway correct, would seem to show that they have been planning at this stage to have 9 based aircraft?

As I understand Wizz will restart here 30/7 ...not sure how many based aircraft though

The flight info will be showing what's in the schedule. W9 are obviously still holding the slots and don't have the need to hand them back currently.

Some interesting destinations shown by Wizz. Looks more like the Luton departure/arrival boards. Could be bad news for the latter if Wizz do expand Gatwick.

complement, wouldn't want to loose Luton slots.

You hope :ok:

FRatSTN

To retain the slots without using them they need to be handed back, at least 3 weeks before the date of operation.

If you don’t hand them back by that deadline, you’re classed as not having operated them, and will be subject to the normal rules of having them removed. The hand-back requirement is so the slots can be re-allocated as a series or as ad-hoc slots to another operator while the historic operator isn’t using them.

The waiver also doesn’t apply to any operator who’s pulled out of an airport completely, so no waiver for Virgin Atlantic at LGW. Can’t retain historic slots at an airport with no flights operating at all.

The hand back rules allow launches such as the JetBlue at LHR that had previously been denied slots.

I think the above rules are important, they protect airlines dealing with reduced demand. But they also protect airports by opening up unused slots to other airlines. Otherwise incumbents would just sit on their slots, not use them, but the airport would be closed to new entrants due to there being no slots available!!

Great arrival experience today at LGW this afternoon with TUI (from a Green List Destination)

Had been braced for the worst after hearing horror stories about long waits in arrivals at UK airports generally.

Aircraft arrived on stand a couple of minutes early on 47L, followed by a 10 minute wait for steps.
10 minute walk to immigration to find e-gates open and no queue whatsoever. Straight through with a friendly comment from the host asking If I'd had a nice holiday.
Downstairs to find all bags already on carousel. On way to car 15 minutes after disembarking, 25 min after arriving on stand.

Yes it was mid-afternoon and airport was quiet, but still a pleasant and stress-free experience.

Only criticism would be that every single travelator airside in North Terminal was switched off and barriered off as out of use. I know the airport is saving money by doing this... But a lot of the people on my flight weren't young and the nearly 800m walk was a huge hike. Thought it was a bit of a middle digit to many of their customers currently providing vital business to the airport. Personally, I tend not to use them before/after being sat idle on an aircraft for hours, even preferring to walk the tunnel to/from the B/C Gates at LHR T5.

LGW is getting a route to Dakar of its own as TUI are launching a weekly flight in winter ‘22, Covid permitting of course. Evidently a new beach resort is under construction.

Not sure would be my first choice of venue. Banjul Gambia on same coast used to be all the rage in the 90’s with Monarch, Tania etc all serving but died a death.

Tui are due to resume Banjul twice weekly from 02/11/21 after possibly a 10 year(ish) absence?

It never really died of death, it just wasn’t a feature of any mainstream operators. The Gambia Experience have featured charter flights for years ex LGW/BRS/MAN (possibly others) using the likes of Titan I believe.

The change in government in the Gambia a few years ago may be a factor in the return.

It looks an interesting place and I would jump at the chance to go - perhaps not the beach resort so much - but I agree it may be a hard sell in the UK. I suspect it will be successful from other parts of the TUI network, it’s only one flight a week from the UK so I guess if it doesn’t sell they will pull it or if it doesn’t sell well enough it’ll be a one-season wonder.

Good on for TUI trying something new.

Banjul was a staple of Thomas Cook's winter flying programme for several years, alongside the Monarch A300s and 757s for Gambia Experience. Ebola was the biggest single impact on the market and there has been little or no mainstream activity there since.

Although it wasn't an every-day thing, I seem to recall more than a few tech stops in Dakar coming north out of Banjul where no fuel was available, after tankering everything you could on an LGW-BJL to keep enough on board to then get from BJL to DKR with sufficient reserves.

Interesting choice of destination. Having said that a few other seemingly ‘random’ destinations have popped up over the years with various tour operators. Good on them for giving the Brits who want something different to Benidorm etc.

People will just need to remember that while it’s a secular government, Islam is the main religion of the population and local customs and modesty will need to be followed more closely than in other destinations where tourism is more established such as Tunisia and Egypt. Not that that will be a problem with the tourists it should attract. LGBT+ people should pay particular attention to local laws as the President recently stated that maximum penalities will ALWAYS be used. Included on those ‘suspected’ 😳.

checked the flights, no premium available so guessing it’s a 737Max route?

Daker new IT's?
 

Not so new - in the early 1990's Thomson Holidays began a series of Dakar coast package beach holidays from LGW using a 757 iirc of in-house Britannia AW.
They wanted to do it as a there and back for the crew - Big hoo hah - my flat mate was a #1 CC for BY at LGW and told me all about it.
The series lasted not even one season I think.
Crew did not want to night stop as they felt it was too dodgy, but OK for Thomson's to sell package holidays to the punters lol.
Now it appears new resorts are being built there so we will have to see if it sells.
Senegal saw the introduction of the first Club Med resort in the 1970s, and tourism has grown to be an important part of the Senegalese economy.
Since the 1990s, Senegal has made an effort to reach beyond visitors from the former colonial power France and was trying in attracting tourists from Spain, Britain and Italy, in part motivated by the example of neighbouring Gambia, which drew a much larger tourist share from Northern Europe.

Having now lost most of the Egypt and Tunisia market for years now, I guess Tour Operators are scratching around for new beaches, or those that do not suffer from ''resort fatigue''...

Banjul as we know gained bigger popularity in the early 1970's, mainly at first discovered by the Swedes, who love the sunshine, and then of course the Germans.
BCAL had the route and had built a new hotel on the beach (Atlantic ?) so it then soon became the darling of the Brits for some exotic winter sun, being not too far away.
BCAL's Blue Sky holidays offered the destination.
In 1976, Alex Haley published his novel called Roots. It was made into a TV mini-series the following year and received many awards. Roots is about Kunta Kinteh and the subsequent generations of his family. He was a slave from West Africa, taken to America from his village on the northern banks of The Gambia river.
It was this TV series that created interest and helped to put The Gambia and the West Africa people on the map.
The site of his birthplace is now a common tourist attraction in The Gambia.

Thomson with Britannia 737-200's in 1977 made the first UK package charter flights to BJL (with a Tech stop) and the crews night stopped.

Tania 737-200 here at BJL https://i0.wp.com/jamoroki.com/wp-co...68%2C780&ssl=1

Most UK charter airlines then started to fly to BJL as we know for their winter staple business, along with the Canary islands.
Business boomed until the military coup in 1994 and the Gambia holiday business was then never the same again.
70% of the business was lost overnight.
In 2006 the Government sought to draw up a master plan to re energise the market by 2020.
A less than savoury part of the BJL travel business for the past 30 years has seen flocks of European women of a certain age seeking ''company and comfort'' at a cost, with young Gambian beach boys known as Bumsters. An issue not specific to the Gambia, but also present in Jamaica, Tunisia, Turkey and Egypt.

The Gambia and Senegal are not Playa de las Americas, nor Benidorm.
Quote from - AirportPlanner1
I guess if it doesn’t sell they will pull it, or if it doesn’t sell well enough it’ll be a one-season wonder as seen before. Yup!