BA may Switch DFW to LHR
 

D/FW to announce historic non-stop flight to Heathrow
By DAVID WETHE
[email protected]

Top executives for Dallas/Fort Worth Airport and British Airways are expected to announce an historic new nonstop flight from North Texas to London Heathrow Airport on Wednesday.

Jeff Fegan, the airport's chief executive, is expected to announce the flight on a conference call along with Willie Walsh, the chief executive of British Airways, according to a source, who was not authorized to make the announcement and declined to be identified.

British Airways operates a daily nonstop from D/FW to London's smaller airport, Gatwick. It's expected to switch that service to Heathrow, Europe's largest air hub.

The changes are happening because of the so-called "Open Skies Agreement" between the United States and the European Union struck in late April. It allows any airline to fly any route between the United States and Europe and, most importantly, it opens U.S.-Heathrow routes to competition for the first time.

Under previous treaty, only four airlines were allowed to fly between the U.S. and Heathrow: United, American, British Airways, and the U.K.’s Virgin Atlantic Airlines.

The D/FW route switch promises to be significant for North Texas, because it opens up far more connections to Europe, Africa and Asia. The new flight is expected to significantly add international traffic to D/FW's new Terminal D.

Flights to Heathrow are expected to begin sometime around March 30, 2008, when the agreement takes effect.

In a news release distributed Monday afternoon, D/FW Airport said it would be making a “major announcement on new international service." The release also said Fegan would make the announcement from the United Kingdom. The airport declined to comment further.

D/FW sends about 28,000 passengers a year to Heathrow through other airports.

American Airlines, a code-share partner with British Airways and the dominant carrier at D/FW, has two nonstop daily flights from North Texas to Gatwick Airport.

The Fort Worth-based carrier "has it under consideration" to switch one of its two D/FW flights to Heathrow from Gatwick, said Tim Smith, a spokesman for American.

It also has a number of flights from other U.S. cities to Heathrow. And the airline could switch any number of those flights to D/FW Airport if it wanted to, Smith said.

There is a lot of debate about which airline will start this service. A lot of *A people are expecting it to have a BDnumber. :eek:

This would of course be madness but hey, we're are talking BD.

Have a look at the press page of the DFW Airport website

Does anyone get a sneaky feeling that congestion at Heathrow is about to get substantially worse?!

All of these new long-haul services will be using landing slots previously occupied by short-haul services with 75% fewer passengers .....

Gatwick, on the other hand, should be surprisingly quiet come April 2008 ....

To be honest at the moment I'm considering options for a business trip to MUC in September (end of September ;) ^ :D) and BA from LHR and LH from LCY are pricing up pretty much the same.

It shouldn't even come close as a choice. But it does.

I'm using LCY and STN a lot more now...

Coming in on EOS the other day, it took all of 19 minutes from door of aircraft to car, including immigration, baggage collection and customs...at LHR...you're still walking from Gate 22 to immigration after 19 minutes!

I have LHR-LAX/DFW-LGW booked with my 241 for next April so here's hoping that it changes to LHR!

All i can say is T5 better live up to the hype!

IAH moving to LHR too?

Most likely. That's why they do the IAH-DTW-LHR flight now -- they want that one to be an LHR flight and this gives then a work around.

From what I've heard over the years, BA would now kill off LGW in a heart beat if it could.

Suppose the open skies will start providing nails for the coffin.

I can't understand why this keeps coming up, and why the title is "may switch".

Go back and read:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/b3cc3b36-f29...b5df10621.html

It's when, not if BA switches.

What doesn't make sense is the CEO of Dallas Airport making an announcement in London just about this - it's such old news now. Of course, as has been pointed out in AAnother place, Wimbeldon is on this week.

Or go forward and read ba.com :)

The Oil and Gas industry is just a smokescreen. Th real reason they have done it is so I don't have to drive to Gatwick to pick up the AA codeshare from DFW to Las Vegas. :D

Oil and Gas ?
One of the big Geophysical companies (WesternGeco) is based in Houston and Gatwick. Their Gatwick office is within walking distance of the terminal (5mins max) and they have a big route deal with BA for IAH-LGW.

If this is true, then Houston is losing one of its BA flights. Currently we have three BA flights a day IAH-LON, two into LGW and one into LHR via DTW :confused:

Yup. No reason for them to keep the IAH stop on the DTW flight once the LGW services switch.

It is only there to provide a seemless continuation of service to Club passengers routing from IAH to LOS and other oil orientated destinations.

I can confirm that we do not. It is with Continental (yuck!) :td::td::td:

That also includes the rest of SkyTeam (AF, DL, KL) and EK.

It is those who work for real companies (read Oil) that let their employees fly business or first. Especially if they are travelling onwards to Mideast or Africa (I know Oxy used to let them fly first for over 10 hours).

Our cheap-@rsed travel department doesn't let us fly F or J.

That is part of the reason why the BA deal ended.