British Airways to halve flights to Leeds Bradford Airport

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• Hingeless says:

  27 Jan27 January 05:06

  If the BA route closes to LBA it is good bed and bad news for me.

  The good news being that I will never see the horrible car hire return chap again.

• Gail says:

  27 Jan27 January 05:49

  BA flights have been so unreliable from LBA. Not because of the weather as they have often claimed. They have been the first to cancel flights. If I want to take a transatlantic flight and use LBA, I use KLM and change in Amsterdam. KLM manage to offer a consistent and excellent service from LBA to Amsterdam. There has not been enough commitment from BA to LBA.

  • Hingeless says:

    27 Jan27 January 05:55

    True, the last flight I booked was cancelled, and the flight before delayed so much I just about caught my onward flight to Hong Kong. But that has always been the case with ba domestic flights.

  • RussellH says:

    27 Jan27 January 11:26

    I would expect the LBA-AMS market to be much bigger than LBA-LHR. I cannot imagine that many people are going to fly from LBA when they need to get to central London, even less so if they are heading for the city or Docklands, so the BA service must rely on connecting traffic.

    KLM, though will be serving those who want to get to Amsterdam, elsewhere in the Netherlands, or Bruxelles (direct rail service from Schipol) as well as connecting traffic. They have a much bigger market to draw on.

• Tom Cook says:

  27 Jan27 January 06:13

  LBA is my local, and this week talked of expanding routes to the middle east, etc, yet here we are with BA dropping routes to London.

  The airport is at best a shoddy regional airport, lacking investment. Yes there’s a new business lounge due to open soon but essentially since the Local Authorities sold their shares in 2006 there’s been a decade of dullness.

• Gwyn says:

  27 Jan27 January 06:39

  Yes it is the law of diminishing returns. The more unreliable BA flights became, the less people wanted to rely on them. The more they see people not wanting to use them, the more they can justify cuts to the device.

  • Richard says:

    27 Jan27 January 10:32

    No, it’s a vicious circle.

  • Lady London says:

    28 Jan28 January 21:24

    A bit like BA food, really then. They made it so bad people didn’t want it.

• David says:

  27 Jan27 January 07:19

  Surely dropping LBA would help HAL’s argument for expansion: “With the limited capacity of two runways, BA cannot afford to serve regional domestic airports, but with a third runway then there’ll be space for the likes of LBA.”

  • insider says:

    27 Jan27 January 11:23

    Except they are cutting it due to lack of demand, not lack of slots

• Darren says:

  27 Jan27 January 07:45

  When is British Airways going to change its name to London Airways? I am BA Exec Gold and these points have been earned with flights that started at Leeds Bradford. Every flight that I have taken between LBA and LHR recently was been full and I had been hoping that extra flights would be added not less! The reduced frequency now means that I will have to start using Manchester and if I am flying out of Manchester I may as well fly to where I want to go direct with another airline rather than fly to Heathrow and connect. So I will use up the stash of Avios and the companion voucher that I am sitting on and switch my loyalty to Star Alliance airlines.

  • Darren says:

    27 Jan27 January 07:59

    … And it will become a self fulfilling prophecy as if people can’t get good connections via LBA, BA are naive if they think people will go on an earlier or later flight instead to fill up that one. Traffic between LBA and LHR will drop and BA will use that as an argument to drop the service completely!

    • Alan says:

      27 Jan27 January 08:26

      I’m with Darren on that one. This is the the final nail for me and BA. BA drop in quality, stupid surcharges, the dropping of BA/AA flights from MAN to JFK and now the reduction in LBA flights.
      As most of my flights head west, it is now a choice of Dublin, Amsterdam or Virgin from Manchester
      Time to start looking at the credit card again!

  • Nick says:

    27 Jan27 January 10:22

    Remind me which exact Star Alliance airlines serve LBA?

    • Briandt says:

      27 Jan27 January 10:33

      +1

    • Kip says:

      27 Jan27 January 10:35

      He said *A out of MAN. If he has to go out of MAN there are better options than BA via LHR.

• Briandt says:

  27 Jan27 January 08:36

  The more people that give up on BA and Avios is fine by me…maybe a few more redemption seats will open up.
  ( I just wonder, if these people do actually put their money where their mouth is ?)

  • Mr(s) Entitled says:

    27 Jan27 January 08:47

    I did. Havent taken a BA flight in years. Always fly direct from MAN when short haul. If heading East I might use Avios on Qatar from MAN changing in Doha depending on cash rates. West is usually cash.

    I’m not anti BA. Their products not the best but its not the worse either. Fly with anyone enough and you will probably tire of their offering. BA have though simply made it to difficult for me to use their service compared to alternatives.

    600,000 Avios just sitting there and 2 of my last 3 241 expired unused. I dont go out of my way to collect Avios and am much happier chasing hotel points.

    • Jon says:

      27 Jan27 January 09:07

      Agree. Strange as it may sound to London-based readers, for many of us oop north, we wouldn’t really notice if BA ceased to exist. They really are just Heathrow airlines. We are far better served by Virgin, KLM, other direct international carriers and even Jet2!

    • Anna says:

      27 Jan27 January 13:23

      This makes me want to weep! Can I join your HHA? ????

  • Darren says:

    27 Jan27 January 08:48

    Your redemention seats are subsidised by those who pay for seats at the front of the plane. If these people start buying flights on other airlines your options will get even more limited.

  • Nick says:

    27 Jan27 January 10:25

    LBA was only ever a slot-filler. They had to do something with the bmi holding so took a load of cash from Yorkshire and ran a gamble. If it works, great, keep it long term. If it doesn’t, well no harm done, they kept the slots warm until they found a better use.

    If people had made more use of (and paid more for) the three flights a day, this wouldn’t be happening.

    • Briandt says:

      27 Jan27 January 10:34

      Exactly.

      • Southern monkey says:

        27 Jan27 January 11:16

        Totally agree.
        It was never sustainable route.
        As Rob says in the article the rail killed it.

        the northerners should stop complaining and move to london.

• Jovanna says:

  27 Jan27 January 08:52

  The flight times under the new schedule are a bit rubbish too.

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