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It has been a busy time for the British Airways route schedulers with the airline dropping its Chengdu route from early next year, announcing a new route to New Orleans and now announcing a second new route to the southern United States.
British Airways New Route To Ft. Lauderdale
From 6 July 2017 British Airways will operate a 4x/week service between London Gatwick and Ft. Lauderdale, Florida on the following schedule:
BA2169 LGW 09:25 – 13:45 FLL (Tue, Thu, Sat, Sun)
BA2168 FLL 17:00 – 06:30+1 day LGW (Tue, Thu, Sat, Sun)
The route will only operate 4x/week for a couple of months as, from 11 September 2017, the route drops to a 3x/week service operating on Mondays, Thursdays & Saturdays.
Prices
The British Airways press release says that prices on this route will start from £189/$230 each way….which would come to £378/$460 for a roundtrip fare and amazingly, those fares do actually exist if you’re prepared to travel at the end of the summer:
Here’s a fare priced up for two passengers on BA.com:
That is a very good fare for travel between the UK and the US and, if you’re interested in trying out this route, I would snap that price up very quickly as I don’t expect it to last.
British Airways 3-Class Boeing 777
British Airways will operate the Ft. Lauderdale route using its 3-class Boeing 777 aircraft offering Business, Premium Economy and Economy Class cabins.
Unsurprisingly, as Ft. Lauderdale is primarily a leisure route, British Airways isn’t employing an aircraft with a large Business Class cabin – just 40 seats – but that’s still 40 more Business Class seats flying in and out of Miami 3-4 times a week.
British Airways Club World cabin 3-class Boeing 777
The aircraft operating the route will also have 24 World Traveller Plus (Premium Economy) seats and 223 World Traveller (Economy Class) seats.
Unlike a lot of transatlantic airlines British Airways still flys its 777 aircraft with 9 seats across the Economy Class cabin and that’s good news for travelers.
Where a lot of airlines only offer seats that are 17″ wide this particular British Airways aircraft offers seats that are 18″ wide….and that’s just about as good as you’re going to get across the Atlantic.
The newer British Airways 777s and a few of the older ones that have been refurbished will have the latest Economy Class seats the airline offers:
British Airways 777 new Economy Class seats
If an older aircraft is operating the route there a chance you’ll end up with the older Economy Class seats which I had the pleasure of trying out less than two weeks ago on a 747 flight to Miami:
British Airways 777 old Economy Class seats
While the newer seats may look slicker and more modern I’m not entirely convinced they’ll be more comfortable. I’ll happily admit that I haven’t sat in a new British Airways long haul Economy Class seat yet but I really don’t like the newer short-haul economy class seats (I definitely prefer the older ones) and I suspect the same may be true here
If anyone reading post this has tried both out please let me know your thoughts in the comments.
Award Travel
BA releases at least 2 Club World (Business Class) seats on every flight so, if you’re looking to burn some Avios, now is the time to go online and check availability.
All the dates that I selected (at random) still seem to have 2 Business Class seats available although Premium Economy seats don’t seem to be nearly as plentiful.
I would, however, add one caveat to that- I wouldn’t rush to book Business Class awards in July and August.
As I discussed a few weeks ago, summer is the best time to pick up bargain Business Class fares to/from the US because that’s when business travel really drops off. Considering the high carrier charges BA likes to charge on awards you’re often far better off in paying cash than booking an award during the summer months.
Bottom Line
British Airways is the second major airline to announce a new service to Ft. Lauderdale this month (Emirates announced a new route two weeks ago) so things are hotting up in South Florida.
With Ft. Lauderdale’s proximity to Miami and most other things South Florida offers this route is a nice bonus for Avios collectors – we suddenly have a lot more premium cabin space flying in/out of the Miami metropolitan area and that should be good for fares and award availability (hopefully!)
