Rutankrd From United Kingdom, joined Sep 2003, 1998 posts, RR: 5 Reply 4, posted (3 years 9 months 4 days 5 hours ago) and read 8288 times:
The number of resident A319s is 9 with an additional two LHR aircraft rotated via either Manchester or Edinburgh for summer schedules.
Current A319s operating at Gatwick
(Due M/X actual allocations vary swapping at EDI or MAN)
G-EUOB, G-EUOE, (G-EUPA, G-EUPB, G-EUPC, G-EUPD, G-EUPE, G-EUPF, G-EUPG, These are the 7 core residents i believe) G-EUPM +1 other LHR machine
All the current B734 fleet are retained thats 19 aircraft, plus two B735 aircraft to be wfu by year end.
Following GE powered B777-236ER currently at Gatwick
G-VIIA, FOUR CLASS currently used to JFK Barbados and Bermuda
G-VIIB ,FOUR CLASS currently used to JFK Barbados and Bermuda
G-VIIC, FOUR CLASS currently used to JFK Barbados and Bermuda
G-VIIO, THREE CLASS high density for Florida//Carribean ops
G-VIIP, THREE CLASS high density for Florida//Carribean ops
G-VIIR, THREE CLASS high density for Florida//Carribean ops
G-VIIT, THREE CLASS high density for Florida//Carribean ops
Current total therefore stands at 32 shorthaul and 7 longhaul.
From Winter the shorthaul is meant to be reduced to just 24 aircraft thats the 2 B735 and 2 LHR rotating A319s plus another 3 A319s transferred back to LHR.
Rutankrd From United Kingdom, joined Sep 2003, 1998 posts, RR: 5 Reply 5, posted (3 years 9 months 4 days 4 hours ago) and read 8277 times:
Veeseeten.
Without doubt the largest BA presence at Gatwick would have been immediately post BCAL takeover.
The later Dan-Air take over included only their B733 and B734 leased aircraft with the remaining Dan-Air BAe146, B1-11, and B727 aircraft all being parked.
Well, what's retired? Personally I prefer the 737CL's, but someone else prefers Airbusses for example. Off course the 737's looks a bit old inside the cabin, but that's nostalgia
Rutankrd From United Kingdom, joined Sep 2003, 1998 posts, RR: 5 Reply 8, posted (3 years 9 months 4 days 1 hour ago) and read 8127 times:
Because LGW operations are primarily leisure and O/D traffic really.
As can be seen by the high density 772s operated, routes and the introduction of Honeymoon flights to the Maldives and Red Sea in the autumn and weekly St Kitts earlier in year, whilst terminating New York- JFK (No surprise actually as it was always baby sitting the slot for the LCY elite service)
Even the seven core A319s are between eight and almost ten years old and are the aircraft that were ordered for BARegional and delivered to Birmingham.
Yes the interiors of some of those B734s is tired to be polite !
As to your original post and regarding the "Dreamliner" well when BA finally do get them they will be needed to replace the longhaul B763s out of Heathrow. (Thats what they were ordered for in the main anyway)
I very much doubt there will any significant BA Gatwick growth in medium term.
VV701 From United Kingdom, joined Aug 2005, 6623 posts, RR: 17 Reply 9, posted (3 years 9 months 3 days 19 hours ago) and read 8009 times:
Quoting TiktokJAKE (Reply 6): Why does GATWICK hardly ever get brand new planes?
I do not think any brand new (as opposed to second hand) BA aircraft has had its first revenue flight out of LGW for almost exactly 10 years. I believe that the last on 13 August 1999 when 772 G-VIIX flew its maiden revenue flight from LGW.
Prior to that quite a few 772s - I believe seven in all - first entered service at LGW. Mostly these were replacements for the DC-10 30 aircraft inherited from BCal. I also believe that three of the late delivery 744s including the very last, G-BYGG, were delivered to LGW and made their maiden passenger carrying flight from that airport. The first such flight by 'GG was on 28 May 1999, just a few months more than 10 years ago.
Since before then BA had until recently operated an all Boeing 737 short haul fleet at LGW. And in the intervening years they only added second hand leased aircraft to their 737 fleet.
However all of the current BA LCY fleet of Avro RJ 100s carried their very first passengers out of LGW. This was between June 1997 and March 2000. Although these were all BA coded flights their operator was then Cityflyer Express.
Two of BA's 320s, G-TTOB and 'OE made their first revenue flights from LGW. But at the time they were operated by GB Airways under their former franchise agreement with BA.
In terms of the long haul fleet BA of course no longer operates 744s out of LGW. And apart from the odd short term substitution they still only operate GE90 powered 772s out of that airport.
The focus on the 737 and GE powered 772 is therefore the main reason why no brand new BA aircraft have entered service from LGW over the last 10 years.
Quoting TiktokJAKE (Thread starter): And what are plans for the future of the GATWICK fleet, any 787s?
I would guess that there is quite a high probability that we will see an early delivery 787 making its maiden BA passenger flight from LGW. But who knows? We will have to wait and see.
FlyCaledonian From United Kingdom, joined Dec 2003, 1965 posts, RR: 3 Reply 10, posted (3 years 9 months 3 days 19 hours ago) and read 7995 times:
Well in the 1990s LGW was operating BA 767s and 744s. At the peak of Latin American and African flights hubbing at LGW, BA even went as far as to switch the 742 fleet (IIRC 9 aircraft) to LHR, thus making all 747 ops at LGW on the 744 (not sure how many aircraft). The 777 fleet came in to replace the DC-10s eventually as well. For a short time they even had a couple of 757s for shorthaul operations to complement the 737s. I certainly think the peak was hit in the late 1990s rather than after the BCal takeover, as BA reallytried with the dual hub policy and that increased both the longhaul and shorthaul flying from LGW - more destinations were served from there by BA than from LHR for a couple of years.
Longhaul wise LGW doesn't do that bad, though the older shorthaul aircraft always seem to end up at LGW.
1stfl94 From United Kingdom, joined May 2006, 1454 posts, RR: 0 Reply 11, posted (3 years 9 months 3 days 17 hours ago) and read 7972 times:
Back in the late 1990s BA transferred most of their 'secondary' longhaul routes over to Gatwick. This meant that all of the routes to Latin America, Africa (minus Egypt and South Africa) and a few routes to Asia went to Gatwick as well as the Caribbean and the US routes that couldn't be operated from Heathrow due to Bermuda 2. This had the slight disadvantage of meaning that very few longhaul routes from Gatwick actually made any money and all of the money making routes stayed at Heathrow. Actually what BA did was recreate the old BCal longhaul network which didn't make much money and so it wasn't much of a suprise when a lot of routes moved to Heathrow
FlyCaledonian From United Kingdom, joined Dec 2003, 1965 posts, RR: 3 Reply 12, posted (3 years 9 months 3 days ago) and read 7850 times:
Quoting 1stfl94 (Reply 11): Actually what BA did was recreate the old BCal longhaul network which didn't make much money and so it wasn't much of a suprise when a lot of routes moved to Heathrow.
But the BCal network never had the feed that the BA LGW operation did in the late 1990s, nor did it have as many longhaul routes as BA then served. But I agree that these weren't the most profitable routes in the BA network. The idea of the dual hub though was to primarily have North American flights and those to the Middle East, India and the Far East at LHR, with the majority of the Latin American and African flights at LGW.
There was cross-feed from Middle Eastern/Indian flights into BA's North American flights, whilst those at LGW were more reliant on O&D plus feed from the LGW shorthaul network, a number of flights being duplicates of those to LHR.
The strategy now is to focus on LHR, as LGW as an overflow hub didn't work out. Part of the issue was that BA's competitors in the main used LHR still.
In many ways I think of LHR as a Super Focus city for BA rather than a true hub, as due to the slot restrictions BA has never been able to operate the majority of its operations there in the way other European carriers can at their home airports. That creates the catch 22 situation of low yielding flights at LGW, that can't get any feed from the predominately LHR longhaul network. With such feed the yeilds might improve, but you can't get them into LHR to get the feed. And switching longhauls to LGW hurt the yields of those flights, hence why after 9-11 the dismantling of LGW as a dual hub with LHR effectively ended.
At one point you had daily 744s going out of LGW to: -
* Nairobi - Entebbe / Dar es Salaam
* Lagos
* Sao Paulo - Rio de Janeiro
* Buenos Aires - Santiago de Chile
* Houston
* Phoenix - San Diego
* Orlando
Plus daily flights to: -
* Atlanta
* Dallas/Fort Worth
* Denver
* Charlotte
* Pittsburgh
* Baltimore
* Barbados
And various other frequencies to: -
* Manchester - Islamabad (744)
* Baku
* Seychelles - Mauritius (744)
* Harare - Lilongwe / Lusaka (744)
* Accra
* Kano
* Abidjan
* Bogata - Caracas (744)
* Barbados
* Antigua
* St Lucia
* Grenada
* Kingston - Montego Bay
* Nassau - Grand Cayman
* Tampa
* Havana
* San Jose (Costa Rica)
* Dhahran
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