In addition to new service announcements for Fort Lauderdale and New Orleans, British Airways has just announced Oakland to London Gatwick starting March 28, 2017.
It’s four day a week service, on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
Here’s the Oakland – London Gatwick schedule:
And here’s London Gatwick – Oakland:
Like Fort Lauderdale, they’re operating the route with a Boeing 777-200 with no first class and light premium cabins, just 40 business class and 24 premium economy seats. (So much for Ivanka Trump’s theory that transatlantic flights from Oakland being perfect for upgrades.)
This gives them service to San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose. On top of Los Angeles and San Diego in California.
They serve Las Vegas, Phoenix, Seattle. They serve Dallas, Houston, and Austin in Texas. They serve both Washington Dulles and Baltimore. They serve New York JFK and Newark.
BA flies to Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta and Denver. There’s Orlando, Tampa, Miami and soon Fort Lauderdale in Florida.
All of this is covered by their joint venture with American Airlines (and Iberia and Finnair). American seems to be deferring new cities in the US to BA. And BA is looking for growth anywhere they can find it.
This is just to counter Norwegian’s LGW service, but it’s great to have this option and complain all we want that this is a leisure plane at least it will have decent leg room unlike standard Norwegian economy.
One thing to note is that OAK airport usually has free parking deals for anyone taking new service flights.
See, everyone? BREXIT IS WORKING
Glad to see more international options from OAK. Hope to see Air Canada start service to Vancouver and Toronto from there as well. They currently only operate out of SFO and SJC.
Here’s a crazy idea for BA: include fuel in the base ticket price.
I know, it’s just too crazy for BA to consider.
Too bad I hated my last BA flight in Biz. Oakland is a breeze to get to if your in No. Cal. Although Terminal 1 is an absolute dump.
I really despise 3-4pm TATL departures – the only thing worse is a 1pm departure. But almost impossible to get a decent nights sleep. Similarly the 10am LGW departure requires an early checkout at the hotel with little time for a lounge breakfast.
On the surface of things, this makes no sense to me. (Clearly I do NOT work in the airline industry!) How many flights per week to London can British Airways fill from the West Coast???
On the other hand, they’re finally opening up a lounge in Terminal 1 at OAK (from 4am-9pm); maybe they’ll be remodeling T1, too?.
Well, what about down south? Burbank and Orange County might not have a long enough runway, Long Beach does not have an international facility (yet), so this leaves … Ontario?