Shuttle flights

[Superpilot]

Could somebody please explain the definition of a shuttle flight within BA and also a few examples of shuttle flights.

Thank you very much.

[G-BPEC]

Hi superpilot,

BA's renowned "super shuttle" services are basically services from Heathrow to Glasgow, Edinburgh, Belfast Aldergrove and Manchester. They are high-density flights, operated by BA's 757/Airbus fleet. They are called "shuttle" flights because they are designed for commuters, they are quick, frequent and (supposedly) good at running-to-schedule. Many businessmen use them to go to and from meetings in the big cities of the UK.

Shuttle's have the callsign "Shuttle" followed by a number and a letter, eg. Shuttle 2 Romeo would be Heathrow to Manchester, Shuttle 3 Tango would be Manchester to Heathrow, etc. Not all BA Domestic servies from LHR have the "shuttle" name however, Aberdeen and Newcastle operate as normal BA servies with normal BA callsigns.

I hope this answers your query.

All the best
GBPEC

[Superpilot]

Do you mean Heathrow to Glasgow and back, then Heathrow to Edinburgh and back or...

Heathrow to Glasgow, Glasgow to Edinburgh, Edinburgh to Belfast, Belfast to Heathrow - are they all done by the same crew, using the same plane, in one day?

cheers again!

[G-BPEC]

Shuttle flights centre around Heathrow, so usually the same crew will fly ONE OF THE below, not all!

LHR-MAN-LHR
LHR-GLA-LHR
LHR-BEL-LHR
LHR-EDI-LHR.

The crew for these routes will stay the same, and they will remain on board the same aircraft to fly it back to Heathrow. The exception of course is nightstops, where the crew will stay overnight at a destination then pick the aircraft up next morning to go back down to London.

I hope this helps.

[Scottie Dog]

The previous reply was correct as it stands today, however the initial concept was slightly different.

When first introduced, the Shuttle was a 'turnup and fly' operation. Reservations could not be made and only an open-ticket was available for pre-payment. British Airways would supposedly offer a 'guaranteed seat' and would operate a backup aircraft on the route if the main flight was full. The offically meant that if 101 passengers turned up for a flight with 100 seats, then they would get their own aircraft to fly on.

As British Midland will confirm, on the routes that BMA operated in competition , British Airways would often transfer passengers to the nearest BMA flight, sighting operation problems in order to avoid having the enormous cost of flying for just 1 passenger and possibly having the postition an empty aircraft back to the home airport.

That does not mean that extras did not operate. It was quite common to find that the backup aircraft actually operated ahead of the main flight. This would be when good manangement, or luck, had meant that that the extra flight had been planned in advance, and when the load reached a certain point then all early arrivals would be put on the backup and the main flight would leave at its scheduled time with the remainded of the passengers.

Hope this will provided extra insight for you. I still don't understand why they have to go around calling Shuttle XX when the concept is now dead.

Scottie Dog

[Superpilot]

Got it!

many thanks.