Originally Posted by
BA0197
The trouble with a new USA route now is the lack of 788s BA has. Either it means they upgrade a current 788 service to something larger (BNA/MSY etc) or they have to launch the service with a 789 or 772. Me thinks the USA expansion is done for while and BA will be looking further afield. My best guesses for USA:
MCI (Kansas City)
PDX (Portland)
DTW (Detroit)
SLC (Salt Lake City)
Again I can't imagine any being started with anything but a 788.
I think it's time BA takes a look at some of their large holes in African Commonwealth countries:
DAR or ZNZ (Dar es Salaam or Zanzibar, Tanzania)
FNA (Freetown, Sierra Leone)
EBB (Entebbe, Uganda)
WDH (Windhoek, Namibia)
HRE (Harare, Zim)
BJL (Banjul, The Gambia) - An odd one but a coup with them rejoining the group and steal some traffic from Thomas Cook with BA Holidays
TUN (Tunis, Tunisia ;not Commonwealth, but a glaring hole for OW in general)
Not sure of the bilateral restrictions in these relationships, but it does rather surprise me that BA have been so keen to send the 788s on routes to the Americas without a single attempt for a 788 to Africa.
The trouble with the African destinations is that BA have flown to all of them previously and since pulled out. Some were for political instability or security reasons, others simply did not work economically. Most are still easily reached using a OW partner airline and some are BA code shares.
When previously operated frequencies were often poor and final destination was often a tag on. For many of these the current arrangements are actually an improvement.
There seems to be much talk of WDH in this thread including the bizarre idea of flying an A380 there. Comair struggle to fill a 737 on the JNB-WDH route, which is likely to be the largest route by passenger numbers out of WDH. Whilst Namibia is a great country, for most visitors to Southern Africa exploring SA or even Zimbabwe are likely to be higher on the agenda.
Africa is lacking direct BA routes compared with previous decades, but there will be sound commercial reasons for this. It is a hard market, as Comair have found out. Note that Comair only flies as BA between CPT, JNB, PLZ and DUR. It offers no BA domestic routes to Bloemfontein, East London, George or the plethora of other sizeable cities with proper airports. It tried route to MPU and pulled out. Within the region, it has tried and withdrawn routes to GAB, MPT, DAR to name but a few.
When the African economy grows, flights may come back, but we are no there yet.