The last day of March in 2019 is a busy one for the aviation world. On the day the clocks go forward, summer officially begins. And that is the cue for airlines to introduce a wide range of new links.
Go back 12 years, and I counted 100 fresh departures from UK airports for the summer of 2007. That was the point of maximum expansion during the low-cost aviation revolution. Things swiftly went into reverse after the economic crash the following year.
But horizons are expanding once again, with new route opportunities (and, if a choice of times is more important for you than destinations, plenty of increased frequencies). And to make them more memorable for you, I have awarded each a name. (Do let me know if you have better ideas.)
Over the past couple of years, Ryanair has repeatedly said that expansion from the UK will slow because of Brexit. But the Irish airline has plenty of new tricks for the summer – starting with Check-in Kiev. This is the new Ryanair service from Manchester to the Ukrainian capital.
Another is the Exe Patria, connecting south Devon with southern Italy through an implausible link between Exeter and Naples.
The travelling public needs convincing, too, given that five days before the first flight I found a fare of £9.99 for 1,100 miles of air travel.
Some of the “new” British Airways routes are actually back to the future, resurrecting links such as Heathrow to Pittsburgh. BA will operate the Rust Belt Rover to western Pennsylvania only four times a week, rather than its former daily service.
Osaka is another retread: Heathrow to the Japanese city is also four-weekly on BA20, also known as Get Your KIX (the airport code for Kansai International).
British Airways has a genuinely new route from Heathrow to Charleston – the charming city near the southern tip of South Carolina. With just two flights a week, to an airport which is not a hub, BA’s move looks a touch tentative – but if it can attract high-spending leisure travellers from eastern Georgia as well as the Charleston region, the Carolina Colonial might prove a summer surprise.
One of the key new British Airways routes when the winter schedules began last October was Durban. During the summer there will be a surge in competition as Emirates raises frequency with four extra services between 14 June and 4 August.
A much smaller Gulf rival, Kuwait Airways, is stepping up its flights from Heathrow to its hub, adding two extra Boeing 777s a week – representing an extra 700 seats in either direction, which spells more capacity and possibly lower prices to destinations in the Indian sub-continent.
The pressure on fares is shown by British Airways offering non-stop flights for a week from Heathrow to Mumbai for under £400 return.
Such is the competition that troubled Jet Airways is cutting one of its three-daily services from Heathrow to Mumbai for the summer; it has also abandoned its recently launched link from Manchester to India’s biggest city.
BA itself abandoned the short-lived link from Heathrow to Chengdu in western China when it found its planes half-full or worse. Air China believes it can do better, with three flights a week from Terminal 2 to the People’s Republic’s fifth-biggest city aboard the Panda Express.
And talking of having another go: from the biggest airport in Essex, The Only Way Is Paris. Yes, the route from Stansted to the French capital has been resurrected, with easyJet trying it out after Air UK (ask an elderly relative), Buzz and Air France abandoned the link. Call it TOWIP.
