British Airways (BA) is expanding its aircraft fleet and route network at London City Airport where it is now officially the largest operator with the highest number of routes and passengers. The airline is to take delivery of another Embraer 190 in the late summer after converting a single option with the Brazilian manufacturer, bringing the total fleet size to 14 aircraft. The new jet will help facilitate capacity upgrades on routes to Glasgow and Frankfurt and to launch a year-round to Venice in Italy.
The additional weekly rotation to Glasgow will be introduced from September 2012, while the new Frankfurt frequency will be added in March 2013. The new six times weekly route to Venice, gateway for Northern Italy, will be launched from September 17, 2012 and will follow Mahon in Menorca, Quimper in Britanny and Angers in the Loire Valley as new destinations for BA from London City in 2012. The airline will now serve 22 destinations from London City including locations in the UK, Europe and of course New York, USA.
“We are very excited about the arrival of our 14th aircraft which will add frequency to existing business destinations and has opened up new flying possibilities to popular leisure destinations,” said Peter Simpson, Managing Director, BA CityFlyer, BA’s wholly-owned London City-based subsidiary airline.
This will be the first ever direct link between London City and Venice, although the Northern Italian city is already served from the wider London market. BA currently offers up to four flights per day (three from London Heathrow and one from London Gatwick) while easyJet has a twice daily link from London Gatwick. In the past year an estimated 496,000 O&D passengers travelled on these two routes with BA holding a 54.1 per cent share of the traffic.
We are also pleased to reveal that Routes played a role in securing these new services - senior executives at BA CityFlyer confirm that talks between BA and the airports “were facilitated at Routes Europe and World Routes last year”.
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