British Airways Details Reasons For Introducing Accra-Gatwick Route

On Monday, October 30, 2023, British Airways made history by operating its inaugural flight from London Gatwick to Accra in addition to its regular service from Accra to Heathrow.

The flight touched down safely at the popular Kotoka International Airport (ACC) at 18;26 p.m. and was met with an exceptional West African reception amid drumming, singing, and dancing as well as a VIP delegation, which included the British High Commissioner to Ghana, Harriet Thompson.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with Ameyaw TV in London, the Director of Networks and Alliances at British Airways, Neil Chernoff made known that the latest move by the Global airline was backed by several compelling reasons that highlight the airline’s commitment to expanding its network and capacity in Ghana as well as catering for the needs of its customers in the West African country.

He also asserted that the introduction of the new route from Accra to London Gatwick aims at offering travellers from Accra even more choices.

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”The first thing was about adding capacity to Accra and obviously in doing that we have two places to do so. You know sometimes you can increase the aircraft size but from Heathrow, we’re flying our largest aircraft that’s not the 380 which is the 350, our second largest aircraft in our Fleet. Next to the 350 and after the 380 is trip 7 out of Gatwick because of the way that it has its configuration ultimately we were looking to grow capacity. I was speaking earlier that if you look at the kind of demand and recovery, I think demand has recovered Beyond 2019 levels which led us to wanting to increase capacity,” he said.

Answering the question, Does British Airlines plan to end flights from Heathrow and only run Gatwick-Accra only? Neil Chernoff, gave an assurance that there are no plans to move all Accra-Heathrow-Accra flights to Gatwick. He revealed that there are rather plans to increase the Heathrow-Accra flights to 10 times a week, which may include night flights, subject to some conditions.

Asked if the new route will have an impact on the prices of tickets, the Director of Networks and Alliances at British Airways asserted the pricing of tickets would be determined by the supply and demand factors. According to him, flying from Gatwick is less expensive than Heathrow.

”You know pricing in the airline industry is very very it’s highly complex and there’s two things, how Airlines price one is you have prices but as flights get Fuller ight they’re called Fair classes and as Fair classes increase that’s what causes the price to increase and so right if you kind of get an entry level Fair maybe lower than if you’re booking on the day before departure and that’s just a bit of industrywide how airline price Works do other things that can impact prices in general. Gatwick  as an airport costs less,” he added.