British Airways' winter 2012 schedule boosted by bmi purchase
Above: Three bmi pilots who have joined the British Airways' fleet.
The airline will add extra frequencies and use bigger aircraft on flights to Scotland enabling it to offer nearly 27,000 more seats a week between London and Scotland. This includes 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.
From 9 December, British Airways will start four flights per day between Heathrow and Leeds Bradford, connecting Yorkshire with the airline’s extensive global route network at Heathrow and increasing consumer choice in the North of England. The airline has already taken over bmi’s six daily flights to Belfast and will be launching a new timetable of seven flights a day between London and the Northern Irish capital on 28 October.
A new London City to Isle of Man route has also recently launched.
At the time of EU approval for the bmi deal, IAG committed to launching new flights to important trading nations and delivering on that, British Airways is to begin flying six times a week to Seoul in South Korea from 2 December.
A brand new, thrice weekly service from London Gatwick to Las Vegas starts on 29 October.
In Europe, Zagreb in Croatia will benefit from new daily flights to Heathrow from 9 December, 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 23 February, 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 28 October.
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 10 flights per week) and Marrakech (three to seven flights per week) from 28 October 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 28 October.
Due to the volume of changes being made to British Airways’ network for winter 2012, the changes will go on sale on ba.com in stages over the next few days and further route announcements will be made next month.
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.”
