ROUTES ASIA: Air China Prepares for London Gatwick Debut

Air China is making the final preperations for the launch of its four times weekly service between Beijing and London Gatwick, which will commence from May 2, 2012. The Chinese flag carrier has long planned to expand in the UK during summer 2012 but it confirmed in December last year that it had chosen to serve London Gatwick Airport rather than London Heathrow due to slot restrictions at the main UK international gateway.

Speaking to The HUB, Dr Zhihang Chi, Vice President & General Manager North America for Air China confirmed that the revised strategy could potentially allow the airline to offer a mix of products on the route. Air China has been planning to upgrade the Beijing – London Heathrow route to a Boeing 777-300ER and such a move would enable it in the future to offer a three-class service on this route and a two-class A330 operation to London Gatwick, he explained.

“We fully intend to expand in the UK and increase our presence there but unfortunately we can’t do it at Heathrow. Our daily Beijing flight to Heathrow has load factors of over 90% - it’s ridiculously full. But adding capacity at Heathrow is out of the question and we have actually been agonising over this issue for a long time,” said Dr Chi.

“We have decided that the best option is to run split operations and to go to Gatwick for additional frequency. This is not necessarily a good thing but we don’t have a choice as we want to expand. Heathrow offers better connection options and we will now have to invest in two sets of staff and equipment,” he added.

Air China will offer four flights per week between Beijing and London Gatwick at the same time expanding its network to almost 300 routes serving over 140 cities, including 43 international, in 30 countries and regions. The airline currently offers over 6,900 flights a week with over 1,100,000 available seats.

The airline is one of four carriers to offer non-stop flights between London and China. Alongside Air China's existing Beijing - London Heathrow service, British Airways has flights to Beijing and Shanghai from London Heathrow; China Eastern Airlines and Virgin Atlantic Airways also serve Shanghai from London Heathrow. China Southern Airlines will make five carriers between the two countries when it inaugurates flights between Guangzhou and London Gatwick.

In 2011 an estimated 1.14 million O&D passengers travelled between China and the UK, a market that has seen strong growth during the past five years as the table below illustrates. Air China’s network growth is a reaction to a reduction in its own share of the traffic between the two countries over the past couple of years which has seen it slip from the third to fourth largest operator in the market following a six percentage point reduction.