British Airways will be making a return to London Stansted Airport (STN). This means British Airways will once again serve four London-area airports, complementing Heathrow Airport (LHR), Gatwick Airport (LGW), and City Airport (LCY).
In this post:
British Airways starts weekend-only flights from London Stansted
As of May 18, 2024, British Airways will be launching weekend service from London Stansted Airport. Specifically, the airline will use BA CityFlyer Embraer E190s to fly to Florence (FLR), Ibiza (IBZ), and Nice (NCE). Each route will have one weekly frequency, with a flight departing on Saturday and returning on Sunday.
The Florence service will operate with the following schedule:
BA7016 London Stansted to Florence departing 2:15PM arriving 4:30PM
BA7017 Florence to London Stansted departing 6:30AM arriving 8:45AM
The Ibiza service will operate with the following schedule:
BA7308 London Stansted to Ibiza departing 9:35AM arriving 12:05PM
BA7309 Ibiza to London Stansted departing 12:50PM arriving 3:15PM
The Nice service will operate with the following schedule:
BA2332 London Stansted to Nice departing 2:15PM arriving 4:30PM
BA2333 Nice to London Stansted departing 9:20AM arriving 11:20AM
This will be the first time since before the pandemic that British Airways flies to London Stansted. For context, the airline most recently launched operations there in 2016, before scaling back flights in 2018. It has now been several years since the airline operated any service there.
The logic for this London Stansted Airport service
You might be thinking “well that seems odd, the airline is operating once weekly service out of an airport to three destinations with inefficient timing.” The thing to understand is that these jets are usually based at London City Airport, which is London’s short haul airport serving many business routes.
The catch is that London City Airport is closed over select weekend hours (1PM on Saturday until 11AM on Sunday), so ordinarily these planes would just be sitting idle. So the decision to fly out of London Stansted Airport is obviously intended to generate some incremental revenue with these planes when they’d otherwise be parked.
Presumably these planes will operate the short 27-mile hop from City Airport to Stansted Airport for positioning purposes, complete with crew. Then the planes will overnight at their destinations, before returning the following day with the same crews, and then returning once again to City Airport.
Given that there’s almost no opportunity cost to this service, this seems sensible enough. Admittedly this service will largely be targeted at those looking to take an eight night holiday, unless people book travel into or out of Stansted in one direction, and into or out of another London-area airport in the other direction.
Bottom line
As of the summer of 2024, British Airways will be making a return to London Stansted Airport, with a total of three weekly flights. The airline will operate on weekends, with one frequency to each of Florence, Ibiza, and Nice. This will be operated by CityFlyer Embraer E190s, and the service is clearly intended to utilize planes that would otherwise be parked at London City Airport while it’s closed.
I’m curious to see how this service performs — will these frequencies be maintained, could we see more flights added, or will they be reduced over time?
What do you make of British Airways’ London Stansted plans?
Its like BA thought how can we make the customer experience worse and decided the easiest way to do this would be to have people to go to stansted, a horrid airport filled with low cost passengers at least half of which dont understand that they cant carry a fridge worth of liquids in their hand luggage, slow security lines operated by staff who assume that everyone has a fridge worth of liquids in their...
Its like BA thought how can we make the customer experience worse and decided the easiest way to do this would be to have people to go to stansted, a horrid airport filled with low cost passengers at least half of which dont understand that they cant carry a fridge worth of liquids in their hand luggage, slow security lines operated by staff who assume that everyone has a fridge worth of liquids in their hand luggage, toilets that always have queues out of the door, one single lounge (which also doesnt bother having regular toilets) that you can never get in and an infinitely annoying shuttle between gates that seems to pretend its a train but is actually on wheels.
Its no surprise that and manchester airport are owned by the same company!
Not a surprise that London Airways add more flights to another London airport.
Am I right in saying that British Airways currently operate no international flights from anywhere in the UK outside of London?
“Am I right in saying that British Airways currently operate no international flights from anywhere in the UK outside of London?”
BA added seasonal flights from EDI to San Sebastian Airport (EAS) and Olbia Costa Smeralda Airport (OLB).
BA also flies EDI to Florence, Chambery, and Palma de MAllorca.
Currently?
All are seasonal - as are these Stansted flights. Yes, currently.
Ok, thank you.
I stand corrected!
Ben - There is no "short positioning flight" from LCY to STN or reverse. First, the climate people would go crazy but more importantly, it would make these operations highly uneconomical. You suggest the "opportunity cost is nearly zero" but if BA was planning on operating empty flights to position aircraft on a regular bais, that is a significant cost.
Rather, look at the rotations - they all start in outstations and fly to STN...
Ben - There is no "short positioning flight" from LCY to STN or reverse. First, the climate people would go crazy but more importantly, it would make these operations highly uneconomical. You suggest the "opportunity cost is nearly zero" but if BA was planning on operating empty flights to position aircraft on a regular bais, that is a significant cost.
Rather, look at the rotations - they all start in outstations and fly to STN and then return back with one RON there. Not the same outstation - the flights do not always turn themselves in other words...
Right?!
Was gonna say, no way in the era of freaks-gluing-themselves-to-runways, is a European airline going to risk operating scheduled ferry flights, solely for weekend leisurely 1offs.
The bad press alone would probably not be worth whatever revenue is garnered.
Ben the times don't seem to be correct for these (at least based on the dates I checked).
They leave Europe to Stansted on Saturday afternoons and fly back from Stansted on Sunday.
There isn't any positioning, three aircraft operate LCY-FLR-STN / LCY-IBZ-STN / LCY-NCE-STN on Saturday and vv on Sunday. One of them (Ibiza frame I believe) also operates a Calvi charter on Sunday morning
Uhm since when is LCY closed on weekends? Pretty sure that it's open on Saturdays and Sundays, albeit with a more restrictive opening schedule (I believe later departure times and earlier arrivals than on weekdays).
Also, upon doing a quick dummy booking via google flights, you can see that there are departures and arrivals @LCY every day of the week.
London City Airport is closed from Saturday 13:00 till Sunday 11.00.
@ Ben Holz -- Sorry, I should have been clearer about the airport being closed over select weekend hours. I updated the post to reflect that.