BA to JFK via SNN

sonyair

BA started their transatlantic flights today fro london city airport with a stop at shannon, no fee paying passengers until tomorrow, reports on the radio saying that BA might bring more flights via SNN if the city flight works well.

trad

What are they using? Last I heard LCY was so short pilots had to have special training to land there.

Killinator

How could an aircraft large enough to travel trans-atlantic be small enough to depart or land at London City Airport

highlydebased

Its an A318. They are the largest aircraft type to have certification to use LCY "Steep approach certification".

Cosmo Kramer

Killinator wrote: »

How could an aircraft large enough to travel trans-atlantic be small enough to depart or land at London City Airport

As said above its an A318 and there would be at most 32 passengers (all business class) on board. Even then they can only get out of London City with a limited fuel load, hence the Shannon stop. They are using pre-clearance at Shannon to compensate for the time lost re-fueling, meaning the passengers have to get off and on the plane again there.

The return flight from JFK is direct to London City though.

Davidth88

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8279408.stm

Shows you the inside of the cabin etc

Good luck to BA on this venture , I truly hope it works for them . It shows a little bit of inovation and lateral thinking


Interestingly they are using BA001 flight number ( was one of the Concorde Flight numbers )

FlutterinBantam

Hope there not too many xwind issues in EINN over the Winter:cool:

APM

FlutterinBantam wrote: »

Hope there not too many xwind issues in EINN over the Winter:cool:

Nah, the combination of the prevailing wind for Runway 24 and the high crosswind limit for the airbus 30kts afaik means the winds will rarely be out of limits in Shannon

FlutterinBantam

That's good to know, would be a significant factor in the viability of the service.

reliability would be all important for those geezers.

Tabnabs

Interesting to see that it is to be the first plane since Concorde to carry the BA001 flight number. I hope it works out for them.

Dacian

Davidth88 wrote: »

Good luck to BA on this venture , I truly hope it works for them . It shows a little bit of inovation and lateral thinking

A friend who used to work for Aer Lingus before 2006 had previously told me that when he was in head office in the Willie Walsh era EI had examined the possibility of doing an all business class A319/A320 service to the states. the idea was to have a very early flight from DUB all J allowing some pax to return on the last EI flight from JFK. Never happened, EI moved their JFK flights earlier instead. No idea what config the aircraft would have had.

After reading the article:

-Am sure the ATC guys in the US will have nostalgia calling out to Speeedbird 0001 again.
-It mentions reliability, wonder if a problem was encountered would BA try to have an agreement in place beforehand with EI to put any pax on their SNN-JFK services.
-Anyone know can the A318 go further than JFK? Maybe the demand would not be there.

EchoIndia

Dacian wrote: »

-Am sure the ATC guys in the US will have nostalgia calling out to Speedbird 0001 again.

Though the actual phraseology used for ATC purposes was "Speedbird Concorde 1".

Killinator

Looks like the US pre-clearence is already paying dividends at Shannon, hopefully traffic at Shannon will continue to increase

vulcan57

Dyflin wrote: »

Interesting to see that it is to be the first plane since Concorde to carry the BA001 flight number.

Nearly as expensive aswell at over £4000 sterling return:eek:. I suppose it is aimed at the exectutives, hope it goes well as well and can't wait to get back there to get some snaps.

alpha2zulu

Nearly as expensive aswell at over £4000 sterling return

Some randon dates in January are quoteing 2000GBP return which I think is actually pretty good value when you consider the sums involved with the project and however many tons of Jet-A1 it needs, you have to be talking at least 12/14 tons each way.Also the flight deck crew is changed at Shannon to reduce the chance of crews going out of hours, however the cabin crew remain onboard. Apparently they are on duty from 11am until JFK arrival around 10PM London time.

One interesting little snippet mentioned on The Times travel twitter yesterday was that Willie mentioned its needs a 70% load factor to break even.

http://twitter.com/timestravel


Great little article from the Telegraph On City vs Heathrow to JFK also: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/northamerica/usa/newyork/6251996/London-City-vs-Heathrow-the-race-to-New-York.html

PILOT

so is the British airways crew change people based in Shannon or in the UK, if they were based in the UK then that means they would have to fly with Aer Lingus back to LHR because the aircraft does not land in SNN on its return leg.

Also the flight is almost twice as expensive as Virgin Atlantic First class flights from LHR-JFK yet they both offer an almost identical service once on board. Virgin offers a free pick-up for first class passengers from Canary Wharf anyway.

It would have made more sense for BA to operate a shuttle helicopter from LCY to LHR and connect there( like they used to do from LHR to LGW)

alpha2zulu

so is the British airways crew change people based in Shannon or in the UK

I beleive all the crew are LHR based, apparently there is a pool of 60 BA short haul crew that have gone through the extra training requirement for the LCY approaches.

Whats probably most likely is that say the crew operating LCY-SNN on a Monday afternoon overnight in SNN on Monday and then operate SNN-JFK on the Tuesday

Enigma'

Flight crew are LHR based and cabin crew are LGW based.

Fratton Fred

I saw G-EUNA this morning and another A318 as well.

They look big for LCY, but don't actually look out of place. they still look too small to be flying all the way to JFK though

sonyair

Speedbird the movie

Part 1 city to snn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8E-nR4uU3Q


part 2 arr and dep snn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbqiV3Zs4Dc



part 3 arr at jfk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwcsPAlH3iQ

lord lucan

Nice view of Highbury and the E******s stadium after take off.:cool:

KevR

I know it's primarily aimed at business people in the City of London and Canary Wharf who are travelling to JFK but will they allow people to book SNN-JFK on this service?

Fratton Fred

KevR wrote: »

I know it's primarily aimed at business people in the City of London and Canary Wharf who are travelling to JFK but will they allow people to book SNN-JFK on this service?

not at the moment, but if the numbers are low I guess they might look at it in the future. The trouble is, BA has no base in Ireland anymore, I believe it is the only european country they don't fly to.

FlutterinBantam

Look , if they can't fill a 32 seater out of LCY from the financial capital of the world, the thing will sink.

Expecting SNN to provide passengers in this climate is fooking laughable.