Log In

Reset Password
BERMUDA | RSS PODCAST

British Airways is looking at adding a fourth Bermuda flight this summer, the airline has announced.

Mr. Tony Marwick, BA's sales and marketing manager at London's Gatwick Airport, announced the "strong possibility'' of the added flight at a media briefing in England on Thursday.

While surprised by the timing of the announcement, BA manager Bermuda Mr.

Philip Troake said he had been pushing for a fourth weekly flight during July, August, and early September.

He also wanted the third weekly flight which began on Thursday to continue through next winter, he said. Service is now scheduled to revert to two flights a week in October.

"This market is only properly served, particularly from the business side, by a service that is at least every other day,'' Mr. Troake told The Royal Gazette yesterday.

Mr. Marwick said loads on BA's Bermuda flights had shown a 20 percent increase over last year.

"Now it's time to start looking at whether we need to go from the three (weekly summer) flights to a fourth,'' he said. "We're now looking at that very seriously.

"There's a strong possibility we'll be going from three to four flights a week.

"We will be looking to make a decision within the month.'' From September of 1993 to February of 1994, BA's flights between Gatwick and Bermuda averaged nearly 4,000 passengers a month, he said. That marked a 20 percent increase over the same period a year earlier.

The fourth flight would continue a trend in improved frequency of BA service since the shock announcement three years ago that the airline was cutting back to two flights a week from six.

Last year, a Thursday flight was added to the regular Tuesday and Saturday schedule between April and October and "we were pleased with the results,'' Mr. Troake said.

A fourth flight could not be justified for the entire summer, but "for ten weeks in July and August we were getting close to the kind of load factors that would warrant the addition of some capacity,'' Mr. Troake said.

"I made this point to our planning people in London a good six months ago now.'' If it went ahead, the flight would likely be added on Friday or Sunday, he said.

Mr. Troake said a decision in favour of a fourth Bermuda flight this summer could be partly influenced by excess capacity on other BA routes. It did not pay to have aeroplanes sitting idle, he said.

He was pleased with the increased frequency and said further improvements could be expected when the 229-seat DC-10s serving Bermuda were replaced with slightly smaller aeroplanes in about three years time.

Mr. Marwick said BA's decision would not be influenced by whether planned charter flights to Bermuda from Frankfurt and Zurich went ahead this summer.

While BA was seeing growth in the number of passengers it was carrying to the Island from continental Europe, "the most important element is still how many Brits go out and how many from Bermuda go in,'' to Gatwick, he said.

"When I look at the growth, we could still afford for people in specific places to do charters, and still get the growth that we need.''