It’s not often that I see a route announcement come out from an airline that makes me do a double-take. I mean, there are always crazy things in this industry, but I expect that by now. Today’s announcement that British Airways will start transatlantic service from tiny London/City Airport definitely made me drop everything. That post I was planning for today? It’ll have to wait. This one is just too cool.

As they’re wont to do these days, BA was short on detail but they felt it was worth it to put out a broad release about their plans. It’s at least a year away, but once British Airways takes delivery of their specially configured A318 aircraft with 32 flat bed business class seats onboard, they’ll begin flying nonstop between London/City Airport and New York twice daily. This is just about all we know. So many questions . . .

Will physics actually allow them to do this? London/City is one tiny airport. It was basically carved out of the Docklands on the Thames about 20 years ago, and there’s not much room. The runway is just shy of 5,000 ft. That’s about 800 ft SHORTER than the longest runway at John Wayne/Orange County. It’s about 1,500 ft shorter than the longest runway at Chicago/Midway. It’s less than HALF the length of the runways at London/Heathrow. Still can’t grasp it? Take a look at this shot via Google Maps. That’s City up top, with its runway on the right side and Heathrow’s south runway below.
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Seeing that makes me amazed that they can get this plane off the ground. The runway is so short that aircraft have to receive special approvals to fly there. The A318 received its approval less than 2 years ago, and it’s by far the biggest plane that can land there. So, they’ll only have 32 seats onboard, and that has to help it, but I’m still not convinced it’ll be able to make it on the flight to New York without a stop.

If it needs to stop, is it still worth it? Yep, probably. Most definitely if you’re going to Canary Wharf, the large business district. You’ll be just a couple miles away from there, and you only need to check in 15 minutes prior to departure. So, you’ll still probably save time over driving to Heathrow. More importantly, you’ll save time over flying out of Stansted as well. That was always Eos’ selling point – get to Canary Wharf faster from Stansted than Heathrow. This blows that away, and has to make Eos nervous.

But let’s say they do have to stop. Can they stop in Ireland and gain pre-clearance? Flights from Ireland to the US have a special arrangement. There are US immigration officers over there who pre-clear you into the US before your flight. If this flight has to stop, maybe they can get everyone off and pre-clear them while the plane is refueling so that they can be ready to go once they hit the ground in New York.

Um, where exactly will they hit the ground in New York? They have left out any mention of which airport they’ll use on this side of the Pond. Could they be considering something really cool? Teterboro is the private jet mecca just across the Hudson River. Would they be able to fly in there? That would make for an extremely convenient operation on both ends with short check-in times each way (though they say they’ll have 15 minute check in at any New York airport this uses). I suppose it’s possible that they’re just waiting to figure out if they can fly to JFK or if they don’t have enough slots, but I’d like to think that for such an unconventional service as this one, they’ll be all over the possible alternatives.

What do I think about this? I think this is an absolutely fantastic move. It’s something that I never thought could be done, but it’s likely to do very well. This is not going to be for the price sensitive, but when it comes to convenience, this will be comparable to a private jet (depending upon where they go in New York). With only 32 seats onboard each of the flights, they don’t need that many people to make this work. Combine that with some solid earnings today, and it’s a good day to be British Airways.

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