British Airways, the flag carrier of the United Kingdom
is arguably one of the world’s most iconic airlines.
The United Kingdom and Canada have always shared close ties, and it goes without
saying that there’s a significant demand for flights between the two countries.
So, in July of 2006, it was welcome news in Calgary, Alberta, when British Airways
announced plans to launch flights here from their global hub at London-Heathrow.
This wasn’t the first time they had served Calgary though, having flown here for some
time in the 1980s, and earlier. In 1977, a British Airways Concorde
even visited Calgary to commemorate the opening of the new terminal building.
The inaugural flight took place in late 2006,
and the route ran up until the fall of 2019, with one seasonal break.
However, the route never returned in 2020, and was also cancelled for 2021, seemingly permanently.
Now, while you might assume correctly that the last two years have played a role,
there is a bit more to this route and why BA stopped flying it.
This is the story of the modern era of British Airways’ London to Calgary service.
British Airways has been serving the Canadian market for decades, primarily through the
country’s - historically - three largest cities - Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
So, on July 5th, 2006, when British Airways announced that they would be launching flights
between Calgary and London Heathrow, it was quite the win for the city, and for Alberta.
British Airways Flight 103 and 102 would fly five times a week, with Boeing 777-200ERs.
Alberta’s booming economy at the time, along with the variety of tourism especially in Banff
National Park, meant that British Airways was “extremely confident that there would
be roaring demand for the new flights from both the tourist and business sectors”.
Flights officially started on December 1st of that year with their four-class Triple Sevens,
seating just 224 passengers. The 777s continued to serve the route for the next two years,
until 2008 when the route switched to BA’s smaller Boeing 767-300ER,
which also allowed the route to go daily.
These long-haul 767s were outfitted in a more economy-heavy configuration,
and so they were more suited to a route like Calgary.
And that’s because, even with the tourism and business opportunities at the time,
Calgary is just less of a premium market. The effects of the 2008 and 2014 recessions
likely had an impact on bookings, especially for those made on the Canadian side.
In 2012 though, British Airways entered into a codeshare with WestJet,
which did help to provide some more connectivity on the Canadian side of the route.
The following year in 2013, BA announced that their new
Boeing 787-8 Dreamliners would begin to serve Calgary, starting in July of 2014.
The introduction of the 787 on the route was delayed a couple times,
until eventually, on September 16th, 2014, the first ever British
Airways 787 Dreamliner landed at Calgary International Airport, to great fanfare.
As the very first international airline to fly a scheduled Dreamliner flight into YYC,
it was a pretty historic day. Keep in mind, the 787 is an aircraft which was
pretty much designed exactly for a lower-yield route like this.
However, the 787s were initially short lived,
and after a few months, BA put the 767s back on the route for the 2015 summer season.
Interestingly, Calgary would end up becoming the last transatlantic destinations for the
BA 767 fleet. On December 4th, 2015, the 767 flew its final flight into YYC,
and the Dreamliners switched back to the route permanently the following day.
The 767s would continue to fly for BA in Europe until their retirement in 2018.
In April 2016, BA’s larger 787-9 made its first appearance in Calgary, and these eventually became
a common sight. BA would ultimately use a mix of the -8 and -9 models for the next few years.
Now, compared to Canadian airlines, BA has quite a premium-heavy layout on the majority
of their long-haul fleet. The 767s were configured with 24 seats in Club World,
24 in World Traveller Plus, and 144 in World Traveller for a total of just 192 seats.
Their 787-8s have a similar layout, seating just 214 total.
So, when BA’s codeshare with WestJet ended in 2016,
and WestJet began their own long-haul flights with nearly all-economy 767s,
the Calgary to London market became quite a bit more competitive.
The thing is, compared to other similarly-sized cities of around a million people,
Calgary already punches far above its weight when it comes to international air service.
In summer 2016 alone, when WestJet joined the long-haul market,
there were now four airlines flying between Calgary and London.
There was BA’s daily service to Heathrow on the 787s, Air Canada’s own daily 787s to Heathrow,
Air Transat flying A330s to Gatwick, and now WestJet flying 767s to Gatwick.
Now that does say a lot about the popularity of the route in the first place,
but one of those participants was pretty committed to growing their market share.
In the years that followed, WestJet’s Calgary to Gatwick flights became year-round,
and that led to the first signs that BA might’ve been wavering a bit.
In the summer of 2018, British Airways closed reservations for their flights
to Calgary that upcoming winter, changing this year-round route to a seasonal one.
Eventually, WestJet’s 767 was replaced with their new 787s in 2019,
along with the introduction of a new Business Class that would
compete directly with offerings like BA’s Club World. With that though,
we can get a sense of just how differently these two airlines have configured the same airplane.
British Airways’ 787-9s have four different cabins - 8 seats in First,
42 in Club World, 39 in World Traveller Plus, and just 127 in World Traveller,
for a total of only 216 seats. That’s just two more seats than the 787-8, and funny enough,
on the Calgary flights, BA didn’t actually sell those First Class seats as First Class anyway.
Meanwhile, WestJet’s 787-9s are quite the contrast, seating 16 in Business,
28 in Premium, and 276 in Economy, for a total of 320 passengers.
So, on the Canadian side of things, WestJet now had a very competitive product
and competitive fares on the route, plus strong domestic connectivity supporting it.
Even if BA still had the higher-paying European customer base, or Canadian
passengers who would fly BA to connect in London onto another long-haul BA flight to, say, India,
it’s fair to say that WestJet still took a considerable portion of BA’s market share.
Of course, you can see why BA wouldn’t want to officially admit this anywhere,
but in the case of the Calgary to London route, it’s pretty easy to put two and two together.
British Airways returned the following year for the summer season, again flying a mix of 787-8s
and 787-9s, but stopped flights for the season, and possibly for good, on October 25th, 2019.
The flight obviously didn’t return for 2020, and in December of that year, BA officially dropped
the flight for 2021, with reports that it was one of several routes being dropped permanently.
And let’s be honest, as a lower-yielding destination,
Calgary was likely not a critical part of the British Airways network,
at a time when they and every airline around the world needed to drastically cut costs.
In 2021 though, something else happened that makes BA resuming this flight even less likely.
WestJet had secured some slots at London Heathrow, and announced they would begin
flying between Calgary and Heathrow 4 times a week starting in March 2022.
Getting Heathrow slots is a pretty big deal for WestJet, and would help them
capture some more premium customers - which, again, was likely a big part of BA’s traffic.
Despite the addition of Heathrow, WestJet is continuing their flights to Gatwick from Calgary,
and so far for summer 2022,
they’re scheduled to fly between Calgary and London a combined 11 times a week.
Now, despite all this, in London-Heathrow’s Initial Coordination Report for summer 2022,
British Airways indicated that it planned to use some of its Heathrow
slots to resume flights to Calgary for the summer.
Obviously, that didn’t quite happen either, and if you search up Calgary on BA’s website,
as of posting this video, it very clearly states that “we no longer fly to Calgary”.
So, going into the rest of 2022, it’s safe to say that Air Canada and WestJet will be
dominating the Calgary to London market. But even so, part of me still hopes that British Airways
will return again someday, and let’s face it, I think the Calgary Airport Authority does too.
Thank you very much for watching, and I’ll catch you next time!