Paul Banks

Since I know this interests a set of people on here.

Looks like BA 1338 LHR > NCL Cancellations (Heathrow > Newcastle) 21:05 departure roughly has been cancelled end of march through till early (11th March).

Seems a strange one to cancel as its normally very busy.

FlyerTalker39574

Overnight maintenance at LHR is my guess.

tedcruz

Isn’t the BA1338 only departing at 21.05 in the summer timetable? I flew it last week and it left at 19.40.

S_W_S

I'm flying on this on the 18th March, departing at 19:40, still showing as confirmed in MMB.

Paul Banks

The latest flight looks to be 18:05 which is the 1336 in the cancellation period. It then overnights in Newcastle. Seems a little odd as BA

tigertanaka

On a semi regular basis I track the number of weekly flights that are timetabled on the NCL>LHR route.

As of 27 August last year (and unchanged when I also checked on 12 December), BA planned to run the following number of flights per week (starting next week): 32, 33, 33, 34, 34 and then 35 a week until mid May (when it drops to 32 a week until mid September).

The current timetable shows (starting next week): 32, 33, 33, 34, 33 (-1) and then 32 a week (-3) until mid May. It then drops to 30 flights a week at the end of June until early September when it is up to 32 flights and then 34 flights a week from the winter season at the end of October.

So it looks like they have taken out 1 weekly flight in the last week of March, 2 the following week and then 3 flights a week until mid May. The summer schedule has also been cut by 2 flights a week from July-September.

Not good as this is my local airport and the LBA-LHR timetable is almost unusable for my trips.

Workie Ticket

As a regular flyer from NCL thank you for doing the analysis - could you reduce the Y axis scale from 0 - 40 to 25 - 40 so the variations are easier to see?

mjh0

BA domestic operations, other than maybe London-Scotland, seem basically little more than lip-service these days.

The LHR-MAN frequencies are reduced again, the last LHR-MAN flight in particular keeps creeping earlier and earlier - it's currently around 6pm, and misses connecting with the early evening bank of arrivals from Mainland Europe, the BOS/JFK-LHR daytime flights, and is too early to be useful for a full-day's business in the Thames Valley.

I'm surmising this is to bring the last flight in earlier, such that BA don't have to overnight two crews in MAN, as they used to, and now overnight only one.

At weekends, it seems as though they don't overnight aircraft or crew in MAN at all - the aircraft off the last flight on the Friday returns to Heathrow (it doesn't the rest of the week), and the first flight out of MAN at weekends isn't until much later in the morning, sufficiently late enough that a lot of connection opportunities are again lost.

Obviously the bean-counters/commercial think this is the right thing to do, but it definitely affects my perception of BA. In the recent Nunwood survey I received, almost every response I gave was lower than a 5, and several as low as 1 or 2.

tigertanaka

Here you go!

lcylocal

I think this is only part of the picture.

A few other things are probably at play over time:

- services on the West Coast Mainline continue to improve - most recently the extra Liverpool trains but they come on the back of a lot of lifting of frequencies and cutting of journey times over the last decade and a bit.
- a lot of employers are not at all keen on these journeys being made by air because of their climate commitments. For example government departments have an explicit target to cut domestic air travel. LHR-MAN is low hanging fruit compared to Scotland/NI etc travel.
- MAN has lots of point to point European routes, in particular with EasyJet, Ryanair and Jet2. BA can’t compete on European destinations with against these nonstops.

So that leaves connections into long haul. And with the exception of the day flights BOS/JFK flight you’ve highlighted a late flight doesn’t help a great deal. So the slot and the aircraft goes elsewhere, where more money can be made.

Bigger picture though I do think BA have to be a little careful not to end up on the wrong side of a slight changing political tide on this. However that’s probably a debate for another thread.

mjh0

Point taken about the O&D market. It is very flat now.

Sadly, these are often challenging when used for business travel - i.e. there isn't a daily service, or the times swing about from day-to-day, so that what ought to be a short trip drags out across more days than it need have.

Also, in many cases, our company policy doesn't always allow us to fly such airlines due to their ticketing (e.g. instant purchase), refund and change policies - so it keeps us on the BAs and KLMs of this world. We simply can't book low-costs except in certain circumstances.

tigertanaka

Totally agree (I have no option to book FR even if I wanted to). Routes like MAN-LHR are an easy target for (often London based) environmental campaigners who don't seem to realise that people get domestic flights to connect on to the wider world.

Maybe they should try living in the North East of England and going to somewhere like Stockholm every 2/3 weeks when you have no direct flights. Without a connection from NCL/MME or LBA I am faced with the following direct flight options:

• Double daily from MAN on SK (but requires 2.5 hours on the transpennine express or a 2.5 hour drive including a rush hour M62)
• Twice weekly from MAN on DY (but requires 2.5 hours on the transpennine express or a 2.5 hour drive including a rush hour M62)
• Twice weekly from EDI on DY (2.5 hours on LNER plus 30 mins on the airport bus)
• Multiple daily from STN on FR to airports that are 100km away from the centre of Stockholm: (2.5 hours on the train with a connection at Stevenage)
• Multiple daily from LHR on BA & SK: (2.5 hours on LNER plus another hour on the tube/HEX)

And no connection protection if the train is late.

Or I can connect to global hubs from local airports like NCL (5 daily flights to LHR, 5 to AMS, 2 to CDG) or MME (3 daily flights to AMS) or LBA (3 daily flights to AMS, 1 or 2 daily to LHR).

.

lcylocal

Yep I take the point. But in my experience this is not the widespread norm these days. The most common travel policy is book the cheapest option and economy only. I know that won’t generally be the experience of people on BAEC Flyertalk, but I’m not sure people here are necessarily a representative sample. Plus the huge boom in freelancing and self-employment means a lot of people are outside of any real policy at all.

I wasn’t talking about campaigners as much as they way company policies will have cut demand for O&D travel because of this being the easiest way to meet the targets set. I suspect that losing this mix of traffic is what is making a route like MAN-LHR less attractive than others. But yes it has a real impact on those relying on it for connections.

But don’t get me wrong I’m no lover of Ryanair and I think BA would do well to offer more support to our regional airports. But it seems fairly clear what is driving why BA have got to where they are with this route.

TyneTraveller

BA 1338 is non operative from 27th March - 16th April.

The BA 1336 does indeed night stop, with a BA 1361/1360 rotation being introduced mid afternoon on these dates, which will operate the BA1337. The BA 1326 now stops in NCL to operate the BA1361 instead of being the usual lunchtime BA1327.

mjh0

City centre to City centre, and especially since the WCML upgrade, rail is hard to beat. But that simply doesn't apply to flying - especially out of LHR or LGW.

Only until Heathrow has a proper railway station with more trains to it than just London, and I can make a MAN-LHR journey by rail, without having to change 3 or 4 times (depending on Underground/HEX routing and choice) does it become viable to strip down MAN-London flying.

But we're now getting into the realms of transport policy and the fickleness and failings of multiple governments.