There’s been too much capacity on flights between the island and London.
That’s the view of BA’s commercial general manager Luke Hayhoe as seats on additional flights on the London City route went on sale.
BA is taking advantage of Flybe’s planned withdrawal from Stansted, and easyJet’s reduction in services to Gatwick next summer, to increase frequency to London City during the summer.
This will see up to five flights a day on some weekdays and up to three flights on Saturdays and Sundays - a 50 per cent increase over the summer months. There will be four or five jet services as well as the turbo props that usually fly the route.
Cuts by other carriers resulted in ‘quite a big chunk of capacity coming out of the market’, said Luke.
He said it had come as a ‘surprise’ when Flybe launched its Stansted service and he had expected some changes as having three airlines flying into London airports would not be sustainable. ‘There was too much capacity between London and the Isle of Man,’ he said,
Now Flybe has announced it is withdrawing its Stansted service from the end of March and easyJet has reduced its frequency to Gatwick over the summer months.
Luke said that had freed up enough capacity for BA to increase frequency on its London City route and keep fares at the same levels - from £49 each way.
He said passengers numbers were a little lower than he would like to see but he was confident that with more flights, they would ‘return to levels we need for next year’.
Frequency on the London City route will increase from the end of March, rising to five flights on some week days from May.
BA CityFlyer launched its London City service in May 2012 using a 50-seat Saab 2000 aircraft leased from Eastern Airways. There were fears for the future of the vital business link when BA cut the number of return flights to one a day in 2013. But following the intervention of Manx Business Connection, e-gaming company Microgaming stepped in to underwrite the service.