News: BMI axes Paris flights from Heathrow and Leeds Bradford
Flights > News > # 1158 (19/01/2007)
BMI is axing its Paris flights from London Heathrow and Leeds Bradford, due to increased competition from Eurostar and no-frills airlines.
The Heathrow to Charles de Gaulle service will stop running on February 25, and the Leeds Bradford flights will be dropped a month later.
BMI chief executive Nigel Turner told the Travel Trade Gazette that the overall number of people flying from the London area to Paris had fallen by 37% in the past four years and there were not enough passengers to fill the 72 flights a day operated by eight airlines.
Competition on the London to Paris route will intensify further this year when the high-speed rail link to St Pancras opens, cutting 20 minutes off the journey time between the two capitals. Other airlines have already scaled down their Paris operations, with British Airways axing its Gatwick service a few years ago.
The Leeds Bradford route is being shelved because of competition from no-frills airline Jet2.
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Comment:
As Eurostar continues to improve its reputation for speed and reliability, it is hardly surprising to see BMI withdrawing from its London to Paris route. British Airways has long since axed its Gatwick to Paris flights, whereas the Heathrow to Paris flights operated by BA and Air France will always take a much higher proportion of transfer passengers than BMI ever could.
When the new St Pancras International terminal opens this autumn, train services to Paris will become even more convenient, not only for London based travellers, but also for anyone living within a two hour train journey of King’s Cross, St Pancras or Euston. It will be interesting to see what effect this additional Eurostar improvement will have on flights to Paris from airports such as Birmingham and Coventry, or even Manchester and Leeds Bradford, but we expect that all of these routes will be safe for the time being. Meanwhile, it has not gone unnoticed that Easyjet has never been able to make a real go of its Paris flights, as much due to slot constraints at Charles de Gaulle, as any other reason. Currently, the only London area airport from which Easyjet offer cheap flights to Paris is Luton (three daily flights). Considering how much access to Eurostar will be improved from across north London with the opening of both St Pancras International and the new Eurostar interchange at Stratford, we would not be surprised to see Easyjet’s Luton to Paris flights becoming the first casualty of this new development when it finally opens.
