British Airways ends plans to launch Gatwick short-haul subsidiary

The carrier had revealed plans to operate an independent subsidiary offering the full BA-style service using a fleet of up to 17 Airbus A320s.

But the airline has scrapped the plan after failing to reach an agreement with pilots union Balpa.

“We’re disappointed that our plans for a new short-haul subsidiary at Gatwick have not received Balpa’s support,” said BA in a statement.

“After many years of losing money on European flights from the airport, we were clear that coming out of the pandemic, we needed a plan to make Gatwick profitable and competitive.

“With regret, we will now suspend our short-haul operations at Gatwick, with the exception of a small number of domestic services connecting to our long-haul operation and will pursue alternative uses for the Gatwick short-haul slots.”

BA’s short-haul operations from Gatwick have already been on hold since spring 2020 due to the impact of the pandemic.

Data from aviation analytics specialist Cirium showed that BA has a schedule of 47 short-haul routes from Gatwick. If the airline does axe all short-haul routes from the airport it will mean no flights to four destinations: Algiers, Cologne/Bonn, Genoa and Manchester.

Currently BA is scheduled to be second largest operator at Gatwick, behind easyJet, in July 2022 with the highest frequencies of flights to Jersey followed by Malaga and Faro.