British Airways is to suspend its services to Kuala Lumpur next year because it is losing money on the route, the company said yesterday. The service is being withdrawn to reduce BA's loss-making operation at Gatwick. It is part of a move to trim the airline's capacity at the airport by 15%.
BA will maintain a sales presence in Malaysia, offering connections through Singapore. But it plans to resume its own flights to Melbourne from Heathrow four times a week. Currently the only "BA" services are its code share operated by alliance partner Qantas. The resumption of flights to Australia will be the first for two years.
Reducing the losses at Gatwick has been one of the priorities of Rod Eddington, BA's new chief executive. The company loses £300m a year on its short-haul operations from Gatwick and makes only a small profit on long haul.
The short-haul changes include the suspension of services to Ljubljana in Slovenia and Salzburg in Austria, the suspension of Heathrow services to Jersey, and the halving and eventual withdrawal of flights between Heathrow and Paris Orly.
Some successful routes, such as Rome, Prague, Munich, Barcelona and Frankfurt, will see increased frequencies.
Mr Eddington said: "Our drive to return our business to proper levels of profitability is moving up a gear. We must properly address poorly performing routes."
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