British Airways Launching Pittsburgh Service and Inaugural Business Class Awards Are Available

by Gary Leff

Pittsburgh was abandoned as a hub by US Airways starting around 2004. Twenty years ago they flew to about 120 destinations from Pittsburgh. By the end of the decade they had only half that number of flights and were using just 10 gates.

The airport has attracted new service from low cost carriers, but is no longer a hub. They haven’t had service to London since US Airways eliminated Gatwick service in 2004. Today the only transatlantic flying from Pittsburgh is seasonal Frankfurt service (Condor), seasonal Paris service (Delta) and year-round Reykjavík flights (Wow Air).

British Airways flew Pittsburgh – London Gatwick from 1985 to 1999, before US Airways started flying the route. Now it’s coming back.

US Airways had been partners with BA (indeed, British Airways invested in then-US Air) but that deal ended up in court in the mid-90s with British Airways bolting for a new partnership with American. Now US Airways runs American, and American and BA have a revenue-sharing anti-trust immunized joint venture across the Atlantic. They basically pool the revenue and divide it up based on capacity flown across the Pond.

So this new BA flight should be seen in conjunction with its US Airways-cum-American Airlines partnership. The flights will be operated from London Heathrow this time with a Boeing 787-8 four days a week, Sunday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Friday effective April 2:

    London Heathrow – Pittsburgh, 5:00 p.m. – 8:15 p.m., BA171
    Pittsburgh – London Heathrow, 10:00 p.m. – 10:35 a.m.+1, BA170

As I write this the inaugural flight has two business class award seats available in both directions. BA generally loads at least 2 business class awards when their schedule opens, so this is a good flight for award availability at this point (albeit incurring fuel surcharges).

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Not sure why everyone buries the lede on these stories. Headline should state: “PIT pays $$$ in exchange for BA flights.” Subsidizing routes to come to your airport isn’t the same as carriers choosing to come to your airport.

  3. Yes, we would need to know the incentive being offered by PIT for this flight. Otherwise, it would seem to make little business sense for BA to offer it. What’s next: Harrisburg-London?

    My favorite recent incentive was from the Wilmington, DE airport to Frontier. They launched flights with the advertising slogan (paid for by Wilmington) “It’s silly to fly from Philly.” When the money ran out, Frontier abandoned Wilmington for the nearby PHL airport. 🙂

  6. I was born & raised (and lived some of my young adult life) in Youngstown OH about 50 miles from PIT. I remember that for part of the 1990s, the BA flight made in intermediate stop in Montreal Mirabel. I considered buying a local-traffic ticket PIT–YMX back then, but never did.

  7. I live in Pittsburgh.

    The powers that be – The Allegheny Conference – are VERY aggressively pushing growth and innovation around here. The Allegheny Conference is a partnership between corporations/ foundations/ city & county gov’t/ non-profits.

    Our new(ish) airport CEO was recruited as part of their plan. She’s working on adding flights and updating the airport. We have a new, but small, Priority Pass lounge. The central terminal just got a face lift. There are new bars, restaurants and good shopping. They’re spending > $1 Billion on a new landside terminal, which will use some of the excess gate space left from the USAirways hub days.

    Some corporation must of requested this specific flight. We got an extra United non-stop to/from SFO because the tech/robotics/self-driving car people screamed for one. The only SFO – PIT before was a red-eye. Alaska is starting a non-stop to Seattle soon, I’m sure because the AC is wooing Amazon. We just got more Air Canada flights with non-stops to Montreal and Toronto. It makes getting to Europe much easier than taking a positioning flight to New York or Chicago.

    If only BA had reasonable taxes and fees on their award flights. I’d be excited about a non-stop to LHR.

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