British Airways’ winter 2012 schedule has been unveiled that includes some significant changes mainly due to the airline’s acquisition of bmi.
British Airways is increasing the number of seats to Scotland by 32% compared to its winter 2011 schedule. Alongside increasing capacity by using bigger equipment, BA is also adding two extra flights a day between London Heathrow and Edinburgh and two extra flights per day between Heathrow and Aberdeen. In addition British Airways is also starting a three-per-day service between London City and Aberdeen on September 24 to connect the two business hubs.
The airline begins flying between London City and Aberdeen, Heathrow and Leeds Bradford, and Heathrow and Belfast, while also resuming flights to the Isle of Man
Further afield, BA has also announced new routes from London Heathrow to Seoul from December 2. A brand new, thrice weekly service from London Gatwick to Las Vegas starts on October 29.
In Europe, Zagreb in Croatia will benefit from new daily flights to Heathrow from December 9, six flights a week to Venice will be added to the London City route network on September 17 and a new three-per-day service from London Gatwick to Barcelona will launch on February 23, 2013.
From October 28, former bmi routes from London Heathrow to Agadir, Bergen and Stavanger will become new British Airways routes from Terminal 5, while former bmi routes Belfast and Hanover will become new British Airways Terminal 1 routes.
British Airways aircraft and crew will operate these routes, and customers will receive the full-service airline’s on-board experience.
A number of existing British Airways routes including Basel, Dusseldorf, Luxembourg, Lyon and Toulouse will move from Terminal 5 to Terminal 1 on October 28.
There will be an increase in frequencies in winter 2012 (versus winter 2011) from Heathrow to Aberdeen (from six to eight flights per day), Edinburgh (from 10 to 12 flights a day), Manchester (from 10 to 11 flights a day), Oslo (from four to five flights per day), Zurich (from six to seven per day) and Phoenix (from six to seven flights per week). Flights to Bologna will be consolidated at Heathrow, with an increase in frequency on the existing Heathrow service from seven per week to 21 per week.
At Gatwick, services will increase to Faro (from four to five flights per week), Malaga (from seven to ten flights per week) and Marrakech (three to seven flights per week) from October 28, and extra services will be added to Salzburg and Turin for the winter ski season. Flights to Marseille will move from Gatwick to Heathrow on October 28.
Keith Williams, British Airways’ CEO, said: “bmi’s integration into British Airways is really enabling us to grow our network as we promised, giving customers more flights to destinations we know they want to fly to.
“We’re focusing on new routes such as Seoul, Leeds Bradford and Zagreb, more flights to popular destinations and creating more connections for the UK regions to our global network of flying.”