The young short-haul subsidiary of the airline British Airways based at the airport of London-Gatwick will strengthen its fleet there in order to regain market share at the low-cost easyJet.
Launched in March 2022, BA Euroflyer currently has 18 Airbus single-aisle aircraft in its base (twelve A320 and six A321), but should have some “quickly” eight more. The subsidiary of the British national company offered 48 destinations from Gatwick last week, with around 72,200 seats on departure (two destinations more than last summer). A new service will be launched there this autumn to Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands, while four other departures are planned for the winter season, to Accra, Alger, Port And Sharm el-Sheikh (service to Algerian and Portuguese cities had been moved to Heathrow).
” At Gatwick, EuroFlyer is operational on a fairly large scale said British Airways CEO Sean Doyle on a call with analysts following the financial results of its parent company, the IAG Group, according to Aviation Week. ” We have a separate Airline Operator Certificate (AOC) in place and are operating 18 aircraft there until the summer. Our plan would be to increase this number to about 26 “.
The leader stressed that he has ” agreements to take over the slots that we had rented, in particular to easyJetover the next few years to enable our expansion. This still leaves headroom and capacity for the current operation of Vuelingwhich has increased again and is working very well “.
Remember that the alliance company Oneworld had suspended its operations at Gatwick during the Covid-19 pandemic, before returning there in the spring of 2022 with its new subsidiary BA Euroflyer. It had then rented 118 take-off slots last summer from Vueling (its sister within IAG, 6.3% market share according to OAG) and 230 to easyJet (47.9% market share) – while the subsidiary there currently holds 12.7% market share.
