Etihad Airways is scaling back its A380 operation at London Heathrow.
The Gulf carrier will reduce its up-to-19-times weekly superjumbo service between Abu Dhabi and LHR to up-to-12-times weekly from November 23.
Flights EY019/020 will remain a daily A380 service, while flights EY011/012 will be operated by an A380 on every day apart from Wednesdays and Thursdays, when an A340 aircraft will instead fly the route.
A B777-300ER will operate flights EY017/018 on each day apart from Fridays and Sundays, when an A340 will take over, reports airlineroute.net.
Only two months ago, Etihad added a third superjumbo to its Abu Dhabi-LHR route, albeit temporarily, raising hopes of a permanent all A380 service to Heathrow (see news, August 2015).
On the same day that the airline reduces its A380 operation at LHR, November 23, Etihad will launch its A380 service to New York JFK (see news, October 8).
Business Traveller
Delta Air Lines purchases slots at Heathrow
Delta has acquired six slots at London-Heathrow Airport from its joint venture partners Air France and KLM, slot pairs that Delta had previously leased from Air France and KLM.
By taking ownership of the slots, Delta will enhance its ability to provide long-term continuity and stability on the route network operated from London Heathrow with joint venture partner Virgin Atlantic Airways.
Delta and Virgin jointly operate 23 nonstop flights between Heathrow and the U.S. today, providing significant competition and choice for customers in one of the world’s most important travel markets, one which had previously been dominated by a single airline partnership.
Delta Air Lines
Virgin Atlantic looking into serving Moscow
Virgin Atlantic wants to take over the London-Moscow route from EasyJet, according to founder Richard Branson in an interview with the Sputnik news agency.
Branson said the company became interested after EasyJet announced plans it would stop flying to Moscow next year.
“We are actually looking at possibly trying to fly to Moscow at the moment because EasyJet has just stopped flying, so we are actually thinking about maybe taking their license and flying to Moscow… So that’s possible,” he said on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
EasyJet, the only budget airline flying between Moscow and London, announced in September it was planning to end flights to Russia in March 2016 due to lack of demand, instability in the Russian economy and the tightening of the visa approval procedures.
According to the Russian-British inter-governmental agreement on flights between the two capitals, each country may be represented by a maximum of two carriers. Currently, they are Aeroflot and Transaero from Russia and EasyJet and British Airways from the UK.
In 2012, Virgin Atlantic lost the bid to EasyJet to fly to Moscow.
Last year, Virgin Atlantic reported revenue of £2.9 billion (about $4.4 billion), and flew over six million passengers.
RT News