LCY-BHD from 1 September 2020
 

From 1st September BA CityFlyer will be operating London City to Belfast City, filling the void left by FlyBe. Flights will initially operate one rotation a day Sunday to Friday.

A new route during this crisis...wow!

Should be a good route for them.

I guess domestic services might be the first to recover - especially from NI where rail and road are not an option. Seems like a sensible route to launch, given the BHD and LCY are both BA stations and the numbers seen on the route pre-COVID.

I agree, I think it will be a very good performer. The only reason I was surprised is that BA are usually cautious with new routes, especially at a time like this, unlike the LCCs.

I imagine they will drop 1 LHR rotation going forward to meet reduced flying demand and some passengers switching to LCY.

3x Day for W20
 

Just realised! It’s going to be 3x daily for W20 with a nightstop service. This is great news but we will definitely see some cuts to LHR.

Great news for Belfast! Not sure they will cut much from Heathrow though, it’s already quite thin and much less would leave big gaps for connecting traffic. I think BHD to LCY will be busy enough on its own right, it had to be one off Fly Maybe’s best performing routes.

IIRC they were using a Stobart E190 at the end at peak times to cater for demand, so should be a success! Nice to see a little green shoot of positive news

This is great to see. Hopefully you are right and their are no cuts to the LHR service as a result. The LHR service was cut back quite substantially to the current levels a few years ago after Flybe introduced BHD-LCY flights, and from what I recall Flybe had quite a few rotations a day. The BA Cityflyer might just be mopping up demand from the void left by Flybe.

Anytime I have been on the BHD - LHR flights they appeared to have a large percentage of connecting traffic, so maybe LCY will serve a different market largely business traffic between London and Belfast.

Great news - have been waiting years for this!

I know that the the Flybe London city flights proved quite a success from Belfast city. Great to see these added.

Really delighted to see this - hopefully they'll do well!

BE were doing 6 rotations per day just before the end. I think some of those in the middle of the day weren’t heavily loaded but were positioning aircraft to and from the peak flights. The early and late flights were rammed, and remember there are curfews at both ends along with a longer flight on the Dash8 and due do circuitous routings into LCY.

That said, BA will need to understand the imprtance of the night stopper. A 1945 dep from LCY to give a 0630 dep from BHD arr essentials for the day tripper for business (if there are any of those left?) BA fell down on this on BHD LHR before and lost a lot of business to BE (who had the advantage with a BHD crew base). EI have also always had this problem on the route with no early arrival into LHR making it of limited use for business traffic.

Well BA seem to be on the mark because from late October the route will be served 3x day with a night-stop. Should work well for business folk.

It will also have the LHR night stopper so there’s lots of choice.

This is fantastic news ... I was a big fan of the BHD-LCY route, though always torn each time I booked onto it because it meant another FlyBe trip.

I had the impression that the BHD-LCY traffic wasn't a big deal for the BHD-LHR operation bearing in mind that BHD lost LGW services from both EI and BE in recent years.. The complementary BHD-LHR service from EI may have influenced the BA schedule more than the competing BHD-LCY service.

Though I am definitely pleased to hear that BA are filling this gap.

it seems the inaugural has been pushed back to 9 September now