BA opens talks to start Liverpool-Heathrow link

Aug 8 2007 By Bill Gleeson

NATIONAL flag carrier BA is in talks about opening a Liverpool to Heathrow airlink, it emerged yesterday.

The news about a possible connection between Liverpool John Lennon Airport (JLA) and one of the world’s biggest air transport hubs comes on the same day that low cost carrier Flybe announced the end of its services connecting Liverpool to Southampton and Jersey.

In a further development in the local aviation market, EasyJet also said yesterday it expects to announce more new routes from Liverpool within the next few days.

Executives from BA have been in a series of meetings with management from JLA and inward investment agency The Mersey Partnership (TMP) in recent months. Mark Basnett, director of operations at TMP, told the Daily Post: “We have an active dialogue with BA.

“They keep a watching brief on all major locations. They have a big presence at Heathrow, so its only natural that we would be talking to them. They are the obvious choice.

“We think it’s incredibly important that Liverpool is linked to Heathrow.”

He added that TMP was also in talks to around a score of other major airlines about establishing a link to their hubs overseas as an alternative should the BA talks come to nothing.

A spokesman for BA said: “We have no plans at the moment to operate a Liverpool to London link, but we review our network on an ongoing basis.”

The news about the BA talks came on the same day as two airlines announced the withdrawal of their services from Liverpool. Flybe and Air Malta will cease flying from JLA next month. Flybe currently flies to Southampton and Jersey from the city.

However there was good news from low cost carrier Easyjet, which revealed it will announce more new flights from JLA within a few days.

EasyJet, which yesterday announced another rise in passenger numbers over the past three months, said it planned to announce further expansion on top of its existing 17 routes out of the airport.

Meanwhile the airport’s biggest airline Ryanair is holding a press conference at the airport today to promote its new winter flights.

JLA officials say they are still talking to existing and new airlines about new services to Liverpool and that the airport is set to continue its growth. Robin Tudor, general manager for corporate and community affairs at the airport, said: “Airlines are not going to operate loss leaders.

“They will swap them instead for something else that will work.

“Easyjet and Ryanair are constantly looking for other opportunities out of this airport.

“They have aircraft based here and are always looking at what they can do with those aircraft.

“It’s an ongoing process. The industry is so competitive – we’ve got competitors such as Manchester and the others in the North of England.”

Mr Tudor attributed Flybe’s decision to withdraw from Liverpool to the its takeover earlier this year of regional routes operated by BA. In February Flybe’s acquired BA’s Manchester-based regional arm BA Connect.

Mr Tudor said: “As a consequence of the takeover, clearly overnight they had a large presence at Manchester and decided to consolidate those routes.

“Clearly we were disappointed, but we continue to talk to Flybe.”