It seems British Airways are going long and thin with the announcement of a new route between London Heathrow and Santiago in Chile.
British Airways Boeing 787 landing at London Heathrow – Image, Economy Class and Beyond.
The new route will the longest direct service operated by British Airways, taking a planned 14 hours and 40 minutes.
Planned operations call for a four-time a week service operating as BA251/BA252
Operations look a bit like this:
BA251 DEPART LHR 22:00 ARRIVE SCL 09:40+1, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays BA252 DEPART SCL 18:45 ARRIVE LHR 12:15+1, Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays Commences 3rd January 2017 Booked Equipment: Boeing 787-9 (Four Class)
The route will be operated with a four-class Boeing 787-9, featuring First, Club World (Business Class), World Traveller Plus (Premium Economy) and and World Traveller (Economy) cabins.
Booking has opened for the London to Santiago route, and has clear availability.
The route is currently uncontested, so it’s a new connection from Heathrow to Latin America. British Airways also serve San Jose in Costa Rica and Lima in Peru, Rio and Sao Paulo in Brazil and Buenos Aires in Argentina.
One of the objectives of the Boeing 787 was “thin and long routes” – thin in capacity terms, and long as in distance terms.
It seems that British Airways is exploiting the strengths of the 787 by using it for this route. It’ll be intresting to see if the route to Santiago is strong enough over time to be converted into a daily operation.
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