London City and the A220*

One of our departing Editor in Chief’s bucket list wishes to fly from London City Airport to New York, this time non-stop writes Alison Chambers.

(Also see ON TOUR: High FIVE - It's a hotel operator but an airline too! in this week’s BTN.

British Airways has been off the route for a couple of years now (another pandemic victim and also see BTN 10 September 2012 FLYING AT THE FRONT END: London City to New York).  He could be in for a chance in early 2023 when the new Airbus ACJ TwoTwenty debuts for FIVE/Comlux. 

The ACJ TwoTwenty was launched between Airbus and Comlux in the middle of the pandemic.  Different cabin layouts based on customer needs (and Comlux’s experience in the charter market) were planned.  The ACJ TwoTwenty has three moods with a choice of colours and materials.  FIVE selected the Avant-Garde design.  Others are Timeless and Quintessence. With its additional fuel tanks, the ACJ TwoTwenty (with 19 seats) can fly 12 hours plus, non-stop.  That means it can operate from Dubai to London, London to San Francisco, Dubai to Maldives or Mauritius.  FIVE will be able to fly guests from all over the world.

"Airbus was very supportive of us releasing the first TwoTwenty to FIVE and we are looking forward to operating in early 2023," said Richard Gaona, Executive Chairman and CEO of Comlux.   Comlux is carrying out work on the aircraft at its Indianapolis, US facility, which opened in 2008.

The ACJ TwoTwenty (Airbus A220-100) is a very compelling aircraft with excellent short field performance enabling take-off and landings at challenging airports including London City Airport (LCY) where SWISS operates the 100 series. The official runway length is 1200m, but it is believed that a further 150m could be made available. For LCY the aircraft would just need some additional software for steep approaches.  

www.comlux.com

Index/Home page
 

OUR READERS' FINEST WORDS (All times and dates are GMT)

All comments are filtered to exclude any excesses but the Editor does not have to agree with what is being said. 100 words maximum

Malcolm Ginsberg, UK

BA dropped the second rotation through Shannon due to the withdrawal of the immigration facilities. The airline also did no marketing and the operation was completely separate from BA CityFlyer, the home airline. La Guardia was the wrong airport.

Alan Bowen, United Kingdom

Odyessey Airlines was formed in 2010 to do just that, non stop from LCY to JFK. However despite raising funds, nothing has been head from it for years. BA were clearly finding difficulty filling seats, reducing flights to once a day and on my last flight barely half the seats were filled in the A318.

John Jones, East Ham

Well done Malcolm Ginsberg with your support for London City Airport. It is a pity that the Mayor has no interest, and I have not read of the present management trying to get an airline to go direct to New York, and the Middle East. I did La Guardia twice. Easy into Central Park.