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Someone has clearly put something in the water at Waterside because British Airways just keeps coming out with new route announcements!
Last week British Airways announced that, from next year, it will begin service to New Orleans, then we got an announcement that we’ll see British Airways service to/from Ft. Lauderdale from July 2017 and now the airline has announced a new route to Oakland, California.
British Airways New Route To Oakland
From 28 March 2017 British Airways will offer a 4x/week service between London Gatwick and Oakland, California using its 3-cabin Boeing 777-200 aircraft no First Class on this route.
The schedule looks as follows:
BA2279 LGW 10:20 – 13:15 OAK (Mon, Thu, Sat)
BA2279 LGW 11:25 – 14:20 OAK (Tue)
BA2278 OAK 15:05 – 09:25+1 day LGW (Mon, Thu, Sat)
BA2278 OAK 16:10 – 10:30+1 day LGW (Tue)
Colm Lacy, British Airways’ Head of commercial at Gatwick, is quoted as saying:
We’re very excited to open up California to our customers in the Gatwick area and position British Airways as the number one European carrier to the Golden State. Boasting 260 days of sunshine, award-winning restaurants, some of the world’s best wine, a buzzing tech industry, great sports teams and world-renowned tourist attractions – there’s something for everyone.
Pricing per British Airways:
The route will launch with fares from:
- £189 each way based on a return fare in World Traveller
- £448 in World Traveller Plus
- £998 in Club World
British Airways Holidays offers seven days, from £579 per person, travelling September 7 to October 21. Includes World Traveller return flights from Gatwick and a convertible Ford Mustang car.
Award Availability
As British Airways promises to release a minimum of 2 Business Class award seats per flight and as this route has only just opened up, there is a plentiful supply of awards right now.
Example outbound
Example inbound
Award space to the US West Coast is not normally too easy to find so, if you can use Oakland as a gateway to your US west coast trip I’d strongly urge you to book awards sooner rather than later – these will not be around for long.
Thoughts
First Ft. Lauderdale and now Oakland…it looks like British Airways is going after the low-cost carriers and, in particular, Norwegian.
Norwegian serves Oakland 3x/week out of London Gatwick so BA is deliberately going head to head with them on this route – it will be interesting to see how this works out for both carriers.
Its always good to have more service to/from the West Coast as it can be hard to find award availability to San Francisco, LA, and Dan Diego – with Oakland being just on the other side of the bay to San Francisco it could be a very useful option.
[…] seating in the Economy Class cabin. This will include all the 777’s flying out of Gatwick (which includes the new route to Oakland) and some 777s out of […]