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British Airways has announced that it will be launching service between London Heathrow and Santiago, Chile from January 2017. The flight will become British Airways’ longest flight at over 7,200 miles and is scheduled at 14 hours and 40 minutes.
The new route, set to commence operations on 3 January 2017, will be taking over from the Heathrow – Buenos Aires route (6,904 miles) as the airlines longest and will be operated by one of British Airways’ new 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft 4x per week.
The schedule currently looks like this:
BA251 LHR 22:00 – 09:40 +1 day SCL (Tue, Thur, Fri, Sat)
BA250 SCL 18:45 – 12:05+1 day LHR (Mon, Wed, Thur, Sat)
Pricing
British Airways have announced the following (emphasis is mine):
To celebrate the launch, British Airways is offering a special fare of £749 return in World Traveller (economy), £1,299 in World Traveller Plus (premium economy) and £1,999 in Club World (business class).
That’s $1,085/$1,885/$2,900 so the prices aren’t really that “special” at all. Also, note that there’s no mention of a special fare for First Class 🙂
I’ve had a look around on the ITA Matrix search tool and, while I can see a few cheaper fares originating in Europe and that link up with the new LHR-SCL route, the savings don’t appear big enough to warrant the cost of positioning flights and the extra travel time:
Award Pricing
On the basis that no one should be wasting American Airlines AAdvantage miles on long haul British Airways flights (the fuel surcharges mean that it’s not worth it) I’ll stick to showing the cost in Avios.
Based on the distance of the flight (7,000+ miles) these should be the cost of award redemptions:
Round-Trip Off Peak Awards (per person):
- World Traveller (Economy) – 65,000 Avios
- World Traveller Plus (Premium Economy) – 130,000 Avios
- Club World (Business Class) – 250,000 Avios
- First Class – 340,000 Avios
Round-Trip Peak Awards (per person):
- World Traveller (Economy) – 100,000 Avios
- World Traveller Plus (Premium Economy) – 200,000 Avios
- Club World (Business Class) – 300,000 Avios
- First Class – 400,000 Avios
And you need to remember to add “carrier surcharges” to those Avios costs as well. For most people it’s pointless even considering a redemption unless they’re swimming in Avios they can’t otherwise use.
The British Airways 787-9 Dreamliner
The British Airways is one of the few airlines that has a First Class cabin in its Dreamliners (although not in the 787-8 variant) so the aircraft operating the Heathrow – Santiago Route will offer all four of British Airways’ cabins.
British Airways 787-9 First Class
British Airways 787-9 First Class
While the First Class cabin has been updated (and looks very ice indeed) the same can’t really be said for the Business Class (Club World) offering where British Airways are persisting with their outdated and, to my mind, very poor product.
From the lack of storage space around the seat to the claustrophobic nature of a lot of the cabins to lack of direct aisle access for most seats, the British Airways Business Class product is now light years behind the competition. Nevertheless it’s still better than sitting in Economy so everything is relative!
For completeness here is the full information on the British Airways 787-9 per SeatGuru:
Bottom Line
As always, it’s great to have a new route on the British Airways map albeit not one that I expect to burn any of my miles on. I’ve heard some very good things about the Chilean capital so I’ll be on the lookout for any good deals out of Europe (exc. UK) that would mean I get to visit for myself.
If anyone spots a good Business Class deal for this new route please post in the comments.
