Air fares to key holiday destinations are soaring after the latest round of British Airways summer flight cuts.
Half the planned BA departures between London Heathrow and Nice in August have been axed, according to figures from the airline schedule website Aeroroutes.
Instead of 52 flights per week between Heathrow and Nice, as planned on 8 May, only 26 will operate.
As a result of the cuts, fares on the route between London and the Cote d’Azur have soared. On 13 August, for example, the cheapest one-way flight on British Airways is £623 – for passengers taking cabin baggage only.
WIth seats in short supply, the first easyJet flight from Gatwick on that day is sold out, with three seats remaining on the second at £442 one way – again with only hand luggage.
Flight cancellations well in advance of departure are on an unprecedented scale for a normal summer. BA will operate 1,590 fewer flights to and from London Heathrow in August compared with the schedule on sale just nine weeks ago.
A quarter of a million seats have been taken off the market at BA’s main base for the peak holiday month.
According to analysis by The Independent, Nice sees the highest number of cancellations – but the percentages of links grounded to Berlin and Brussels are even higher at 52 and 59 per cent respectively.
The pattern of cuts varies dramatically from one destination to another.
Mainly business destinations such as Basel, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Munich and Zagreb are seeing a high level of cancellations.
In contrast, some holiday routes have no reduction, and just a single flight has been culled from the August schedule to Dubrovnik, Ibiza, Madeira, Santorini and Thessaloniki.
From BA’s second base, London Gatwick, a further 11 per cent of August flights have been taken out of the schedule in the course of a week.
Amsterdam links are cut by 59 per cent to five a day. Bordeaux loses 38 per cent of planned flights, and Venice reduces from 36 to 28 departures in August – a 22 per cent fall.
Affected passengers are entitled to be flown on the same day as their original booking – on any airline that has a seat available.
Because more than 14 days’ notice is being given, no cash compensation is being paid.
British Airways August flight cancellations
Key cuts of August flights to leading European destinations on British Airways from London Heathrow, according to Aeroroutes. Reduction is shown from intended schedule on 8 May to 11 July:
- Athens 167 > 159
- Barcelona 217 > 186
- Faro 77 > 73
- Frankfurt 141 > 87
- Gibraltar 62 > 51
- Istanbul 89 > 66
- Malaga 122 > 111
- Marseille 123 > 77
- Nice 232 > 116
- Palma de Mallorca 96 > 86
- Rome 170 > 143
- Venice 110 > 91
