British Airways will return to London’s Stansted airport thanks to an opportunistic scheduling play. The carrier will offer service to Florence, Ibiza and Nice, operated by its BA Cityflyer subsidiary during the Summer 2024 season.
The routes will each operate once weekly, on the weekends. And, notably, the flights will operate when the Embraer E190 aircraft – typically based at London’s City Airport – are unable to fly to their normal home base.
For each of the three routes the planes will arrive at Stansted on Saturday afternoon, returning on Sunday morning. Those times align with the weekend closure of London City Airport (1p Saturday to 11a Sunday).
It is a play in the margins, aiming to grab enough extra revenue to offset the operating costs of the route. But the opportunity cost of not operating the route is low. If the flights did not operate the plane and crew would simply be idle at the southern destination, awaiting the reopening of London City Airport and their return on Sunday afternoon.
British Airways will face some competition on two of the routes. Both Ryanair and Jet2 operate to Ibiza from Stansted. Ryanair also operates to Nice nonstop. BA pitches itself as the “premium airline option” on the routes. This includes offering a full meal service with drinks from the bar, priority board and additional baggage allowance for business class passengers.
These routes differ from BA Cityflyer’s Edinburgh services to San Sebastian, Spain and Olbia, Sardinia in that those, while limited, are not limited to hours when London City airport is closed.
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