British Airways plans to bring all of its London Heathrow flights together into two terminals, streamlining passenger transfers for connections to the rest of the UK and Europe.
Following a presentation to investors earlier this month, in which the move was slated for 'c.2014' – shorthand for 'circa' or 'around' 2014 – a BA spokesperson confirmed the plan to Australian Business Traveller, noting that the airline "currently operates from T1, T3 and T5. T1 came back on the BA map following the integration of bmi into the BA network."
The spokesperson was unable to advise which terminal would join BA's flagship T5 as the airline's twin home hub, saying that BA's Heathrow team was "working through the detail on the consolidation."
As we recently reported, in March 2013 British Airways will also shift the UK end of its Sydney-Singapore-London flights from London Heathrow’s Terminal 3 to the newer and streamlined Terminal 5.
BA is also looking to transfer some of bmi's UK and European traffic rights at Heathrow across to long-haul British Airways routes, with the investor presentation listing "Convert slots from short-haul to long-haul use" on a slide marked "bmi turnaround – optimise".
"BA are looking at how we best use the slots that we gained through the bmi integration" the spokesperson confirmed. "We are looking at converting the shorthaul slots to longhaul services where we see an opportunity."
Earlier this month BA's bête noire Virgin Atlantic swooped in and scooped up a dozen competition-boosting slots at Heathrow which were made available as a direct result of the BA-bmi merger, which ironically Virgin will use to launch short-haul flights within the UK as well as to Europe and the Middle East.
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About David Flynn
David Flynn is the editor of Australian Business Traveller and a bit of a travel tragic with a weakness for good coffee, shopping and lychee martinis.








1 on 29/11/12 by kash