British Airways will start to use its Airbus A380s on its London Heathrow – San Francisco route from next summer, the third US and sixth global destination to be served by its Super Jumbo fleet. The UK carrier will deploy the aircraft on five of its 14 weekly rotations on the route from March 29, 2015.
The airline is shortly to take delivery of its seventh A380 (of 12 on order), a part of a £5 billion investment in new aircraft, smarter cabins, elegant lounges, and new technologies to make life more comfortable for passengers in the air and on the ground. It already uses the aircraft on its routes to Hong Kong, Johannesburg and Los Angeles and will debut the aircraft in the Washington and Singapore markets from October 2, 2014 and October 28, 2014, respectively.
The 469-seat A380 will substitute a smaller Boeing 747-400 on the five London – San Francisco services boosting weekly capacity by just under 20 per cent. All nine other weekly rotations will continue to be served using the smaller Jumbos which are configured in either 299- or 337-seat arrangements.
British Airways has configured its A380s with 14 First suites on the main deck, and 97 Club World seats, split between the main and upper deck (which features a new 2:3:2 configuration). The popular World Traveller Plus cabin has been increased to 55 seats with 303 seats in World Traveller.
“San Francisco is a firm favourite with our customers so we couldn’t be happier that they’ll be able to fly there on one of the newest and most advanced aircraft in our fleet,” said Lynne Embleton, director of strategy, British Airways.
In a recent press release the UK carrier acknowledged its fleet of older 747-400s were in need of upgrades and confirmed plans to ‘refresh’ its fleet with work on 18 selected aircraft due to commence in August next year. The refit, to be carried out by British Airways’ engineers in Cardiff, will include a cabin interior refresh bringing these 747s more in line with the airline’s newest aircraft.
In a competitive market which sees Virgin Atlantic offer a daily service and United Airlines a double daily operation, the enhanced comfort and in-flight offering from the A380 deployment will enable British Airways to differentiate its product from its rivals.
“Customers will be able to enjoy a taste of luxury and relax all the way to the west coast in comfort and style, and be able to choose from more than 130 movies and 650 TV shows from our latest in-flight entertainment system, as well as enjoy the very best of height-cuisine,” added Embleton.
Elsewhere, British Airways is also increasing flights to Miami from fourteen to seventeen a week, from March 30, 2015 to May 2, 2015. The increase will continue on from the winter 2014/2015 season for this five week period up to and including the busy Easter holidays when it will revert back to a double daily service. The airline will also increase capacity to Cape Town from March 29, 2015 to April 27, 2015 from nine flights per week to a double daily schedule.
In our analysis, below, we look more closely at traffic between London Heathrow and San Francisco, based upon passenger data from the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) since the start of the Century. Demand has fluctuated around the one million passenger mark for much of this period but had declined as low as 860,000 in 2010 before three consecutive years of growth brought that figure back up to 978,000 in 2013.
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