British Airways steps up domestic routes

domestic connections to Heathrow this winter following parent company IAG’s the takeover of BMI.

The airline will add extra frequencies and use bigger aircraft on services to Scotland. This will enable it to offer nearly 27,000 more seats a week between London and Scotland.

BA is adding two extra flights a day between Heathrow and Edinburgh, two daily flights to Aberdeen and an additional frequency to Manchester.

Four flights a day between the London hub and Leeds/Bradford start on December 9.

The airline has already taken over BMI’s six daily flights to Belfast, and will be launching a seven frequency on October 28.

BA is also starting a three flights a day between London City airport and Aberdeen on September 24 in addition to a recently launched route to the Isle of Man.

Six flights a week between Heathrow and Seoul start on December 2 while three flights a week between Gatwick and Las Vegas are launched on October 29.

Former BMI routes from Heathrow to Agadir, Bergen and Stavanger will become BA routes from Heathrow Terminal 5 from October 28. Ex-BMI routes to Belfast and Hanover will be served by BA from Terminal 1.

A number of existing BA routes, including Basel, Dusseldorf, Luxembourg, Lyon and Toulouse, will move from Terminal 5 to Terminal 1 on October 28.

Zagreb in Croatia will be served by new daily flights from Heathrow from December 9, six flights a week to Venice will be added to the London City network on September 17 and three flights a day from Gatwick to Barcelona will start on February 23, 2013.

Oslo, Zurich, Phoenix and Bologna will all gain additional flights from Heathrow as part of BA’s winter timetable. Flights to Marseille will move from Gatwick to Heathrow on October 28.

Services will increase to Faro, Malaga and Marrakech from Gatwick from October 28, and extra services will be added to Salzburg and Turin for the winter ski season.

BA said further route announcements will be made next month.

Chief executive Keith Williams said: “BMI’s integration into British Airways is really enabling us to grow our network as we promised, giving customers more flights to destinations we know they want to fly to.

“We’re focusing on new routes such as Seoul, Leeds/Bradford and Zagreb, more flights to popular destinations and creating more connections for the UK regions to our global network of