Its incredible how much growth weve seen from British Airways the past few years, especially on transatlantic flights.
Continue reading: British Airways Launching Flights To Portland
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
PDX is a hub for BA's partner Alaska so this should work well.
Seems like Delta's seasonal PDX-LHR may go away since it has limited connectivity on both ends.
I love this. While I would rarely if ever use that flight these secondary markets help to ease the award availability issues out of a lot of cities.
Don't you think that this is just to show Virgin Atlantic that even after Heathrow expansion BA will still have the monopoly on slots in LHR.
In my experience it's always cheaper to book two one ways when you book with points on BA then a return flight with points.
Also, a one-way paid ticket to London is not always expensive as an ex London one-way ticket.
Example a one-way ticket from LHR to TLV will be 850 GBP starting price and a one way from TLV to LHR will be around 250 USD.
In other BA news, they just announced a JV with China Southern, who continue to be wrapped closer and closer into Oneworld!
I hope the Delta LHR flight does not go away. That flight (along with the PDX-AMS route) are good for global upgrade certificates and award tickets.
Wow this is impressive. Since BA has limited 787-8's is there a route that will loose that aircraft?
How long before this schedule is loaded into AA’s database? Would love to book this with AAVacations, but it’s not available yet.
@Guy I'm guessing the Alaska Lounge.
I'm always curious what BA pulls when they add a new route to LHR. Something has to go.
Awesome news and has been highly anticipated for some time. This is great for Portland and with their partnership with Alaska, will add huge value to PNW flyers.
BA has been launching seasonal shorthaul summer routes for the past few years. It’s very easy to move that to a longhaul route when longhaul aircraft are available.
Can't wait! Another opportunity for AA to try and route me MIA-West Coast City BA serves-LHR for a J class award!
@Icarus
maybe Mark meant "pulled" as in where are the slots for these flights coming from - there are no available slots at LHR
Meh...
It’s BA.
And you have to deal with LHR which is basically the love-child of Kafka and Escher.
Lucky, what do you think about this?
From the article:
"In the short-haul table, BA only beat Vueling, which is also part of International Airlines Group, and Ryanair, which once again came last.
On long haul, only American Airlines – BA’s code-share partner on transatlantic routes – fared worse."
Granted, it's a survey of people living in the UK, but still interesting.
SJC isn’t 744 at all. It is only 789 service and not surprising it can support a daily LHR service given the size of the Bay Area and amount of traffic to London.
Your article would have been much better pointing out places like MSY and BNA which have been a huge success for BA as secondary markets. BNA being the shining example. BA, as they always do with secondary US markets, asked the local authorities for an incentive to fly the route. The way those incentives are structured are such that if bookings are good the local authority gets the incentive back. At BNA the bookings were so good that from day 1 BA gave the incentive back. Might I suggest you read FT for decent BA insight and analysis before posting articles?
Yes! I'm excited for my home city. PDX is one of the best upcoming foodie destinations in America - of course it is not as refined as NYC or SFO (former stomping grounds) but you will taste a lot of interesting things. Willamette Valley is not Burgundy - but there is really great terroir/climate and some interesting Pinot Noir grown and made 45 min from downtown, and its beautiful.
The Oregon coast an hour away (look up Haystack Rock), same for Mt. Hood - hot toddy at Timberline Lodge... it can be a very fun place to spend a long weekend. Bend (central Oregon) has world class skiing, fly fishing and golf (you hit the ball a mile due to elevation) and is visually stunning.
I sound like the tourist board. Like former Oregon Governor Tom McCall said on CBS once upon a time: "Come visit us again and again. This is a state of excitement. But for heaven’s sake, don’t come here to live." 😉
As a PDX based flyer this is huge! Having another trans-Atlantic flight with connections into virtually all of Europe is super useful. The AMS flight held the monopoly for too long, as the only year-round option.
Yay Portland! Thank you BA! I just wish they were offering a plane with first class...
@ADS. he didn’t say that. He implied the flight operates via the Atlantic No flights are being suspended ex LHR and it’s an increase in capacity. If so , do let us know
$1,564 + 125,000 Avios for an award seat in J?
If Avios is worth 1.3cents each, then the cost is $1564 + $1,625 = $3,189!!!!
Which is WAY more than the cash price of $2,597! = $592 more!
The extra fees have totally killed the J class award seats. It makes no sense whatsoever to use BA Avios for an award seat from the US West Coast to LHR.
CC Blogger,
That isn't true. There are BA 747 flights to/from SJC.
I was surprised myself. I booked SJC-LHR on April 5th and it's a 747.
Normally a 787-9 though, you're right.
@CC Blogger "SJC isn’t 744 at all. It is only 789 service"
SJC flight changes to 744 on 29 March (same day SEA changes from 744 to 772 before changing again to 78J on 1 July).