More BA @ LGW

[tilly666]

BA are introducing four new routes from LGW over winter 04/05 and summer 05 in addition to routes introduced this summer (CAG/BRI/CTA). ZRH will commence in the winter and Vilnius, Split and Thessaloniki will start next summer, all operated by eurofleet 737's.

Again they are mainly leisure orientated routes to holiday spots, which begs the question are BA making LGW into a Charter-Sched base with little business service and total cutting of nitestops for crew?

Rumours galore going round, involving things as hilarious as mid-fleet for crews and more leisure destinations on the cards!

Also what is happening with Airbuses, LGW short haul needs new aircraft desparately. 737's are not looking good and forever going tech, consequently BA is not earning itself a great reputation, when infact they could make LGW a really profitable base, with some of the best crews and opportunities available to them.

Ranting over............!

[Mark Lewis]

I think the emphasis is definitly switching over to the leisure markets from business, as is being shown by the cancellation of CDG, however treading on GBs toes in the leisure market is not what they really want.

With regards to Airbus, whilst everything appears totally liable to change, with rumours flying everywhere, I believe the current plan (And the one that was suggested about a year ago) is that as A321s arrive at LHR, A319s are moved to LGW. In theory you should start getting them towards the end of the year, as I believe some kind of conversion training from 737 to 319 is already underway (Yet another rumour however).

[hasta lueGO]

I dont know if you have access to the BA News - but a couple of weeks ago it featured an article about the moving of A319's from LHR to LGW - basically they're not! It said that a decision had been made to keep LGW as a 737 only base for the forseeable future. Airbus (including all new A321's) will stay firmly at LHR.

Ciao.

[saman]

Talking of Airbus types and LGW and so on. Does anyone know if BAW will switch their TLS service to LHR from LGW in the near future? AFR used to serve TLS-LHR and nicely feed BA long-haul. Now AFR have quit the route completely and EZY serve LGW-TLS, surely it makes sense - slots permiting - for BA to serve LHR-TLS?
EZY & BAW seem to have high load factors most of the time and FlyBE competition on SOU-TLS appears to be reducing to 3 times a week, there must be money to be made both for O & D traffic and on feeding BAW long-haul from LHR.

[spoilers yellow]

no plans to move TLS to LHR, and the summer holiday route (Bari, budapest, cagliari etc.) are stopping for the winter, and the above mentioned are starting.
As far as mid fleet for cabin crew, I agree it is very unlikely, but it is one of the options being considered, and in 2006 some big changes will have to take place regarding LGW CC seniority within mainline.