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Buy BA, fly a different airline: what awaits many Gatwick passengers this summer

Carrier needs to lease planes and crews from its rivals 

Simon Calder
Travel Correspondent
Monday 08 January 2018 17:23 GMT
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Buy BA, fly a different airline: what awaits some Gatwick passengers

As British Airways prepares for its biggest summer programme of flights from Gatwick for a decade, The Independent has learned that thousands of passengers will find themselves buying BA tickets but flying on a different carrier.

The airline’s parent company, IAG, paid over £50m for slots at the Sussex airport previously owned by Monarch, which closed in October.

Permission to land and take off at specific times is granted on a “use it or lose it” basis, so BA will be expected to operate 28 per cent more flights to fill the slots. The airline has already announced plans for more than 15 per cent additional arrivals and departures, including increased flights to Spain and Portugal.

Without a commensurate increase in the number of aircraft and staff based at Gatwick, the airline will have to bring in planes and crews from elsewhere — a practice known as “wet leasing”.

A spokesperson for British Airways said: “Some routes will be operated by BA planes, other services will be operated by BA CityFlyer aircraft and other wet lease carriers on our behalf.

“Customers will be notified ahead of their flight which of these carriers will operate their flight.”

One of the airlines will be Titan Airways, based at Stansted airport. It has covered for British Airways on an ad-hoc basis, for example during last year’s Mixed Fleet cabin crew dispute at Heathrow.

Titan is expected to operate some longer-distance European services from Gatwick, including routes to Larnaca and Paphos in Cyprus, Dalaman in Turkey, the Canary Islands and Madeira.

The airline flies Airbus A320 and A321 jets, matching BA’s short-haul fleet, as well as Boeing 737s, 757s and 767s. BA’s current two-class system will be operated on the Gatwick flights.

One member of British Airways cabin crew at Gatwick, who wanted to remain anonymous, said: “Passengers are already angry about ‘Buy on Board’ [the switch to paid-for food and drink in economy class], and it’ll be even worse when they find they’re flying on an airline they don’t know.”

A frequent flyer on BA, who also asked for anonymity, said: “Many people will have made an active choice to fly BA because they have faith in their pilots.”

But Victoria Moores, European editor for Air Transport World, said: “Wet leasing is a perfectly normal for airlines. If airlines kept spare aircraft in their fleets, that would be expensive, potentially pushing ticket prices up.

“By bringing in aircraft from elsewhere when they need them, airlines can stay agile, seize opportunities and add flights when there is demand. That is what BA is doing here; they are seizing the opportunity of these slots to grow their business.

“It is better for the airline and the customer when they fly their own aircraft, so this is likely to be a short-term solution until they can fly the routes themselves.”

Malcolm Ginsberg, editor in chief of Business Travel News, said: “When passengers arrive to board and aircraft through an airbridge the majority have not a clue what they are getting on.”

Last summer during the cabin-crew dispute, British Airways covered some flights using aircraft and crew from Qatar Airways — which owns one-fifth of IAG, BA’s holding company. BA had applied to the Civil Aviation Authority to deploy the Qatari airline again this year, but the application has now been dropped.

The Monarch slots can be used for any destination, but British Airways has chosen to add flights to a number of destinations previously flown by the defunct carrier, with new flights from Gatwick to Palma, Menorca and Gibraltar duplicating old Monarch routes.

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