BA - Book ahead

If you are a business traveller and you want to fly at short notice from (but not to) Heathrow over the next few weeks you have a problem.  The airline has now removed all short-haul tickets from Heathrow from sale a further week from today.  Prices are likely to be literally sky-high.

In a letter to the travel industry British Airways said: “To help maximise rebooking options for existing customers, we’ve decided to take further responsible action and limit the available fares on some Heathrow services.

“Short-haul flights departing from Heathrow will now be closed for sale until 15 August 2022 in all channels. These flights will not be available to book via ba.com or via our partners.”  Communications continue as a problem for BA, at the time of writing the information is not replicated on its news/press site.

Assuming some kind of normality returns after this date the flying programme is still problematic with Heathrow Airport capping passenger numbers to 100,000 a day. The airport introduced the limit, which will run until at least 11 September, as an attempt to reduce disruption over the school holidays.

It is “very possible” that ticket sales would be restricted for the rest of the summer, including the August Bank Holiday, because of huge demand for last-minute holidays.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before”, a senior aviation source told The Times. “BA will have hated having to do this at the peak of the summer season. It completely removes them from the lucrative last-minute market at a crucial time”.

Looking ahead BA has some very attractive fares and if you want to book ahead for Xmas one can fly from Heathrow to Edinburgh and back for less than £100 return, and a little more with CityFlyer from LCY.  

In the meantime, British Airways’ owner IAG has returned to profit for the first time since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The group said it made an operating profit of €293m (£245m) between April and June, compared with a €967m (£810m) loss during the same period last year.

www.ba.com

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