British Airways to axe Kolkata-London Heathrow services from March 2009 news

Kolkata: British Airways (BA) has announced suspension of its services between the eastern Indian metro of Kolkata and London Heathrow from 28 March 2009, citing lack of business. In a statement the UK flag carrier said, “The decision to suspend flights between Kolkata and London has been a difficult one to make. However, the route is not making a profitable contribution to our business and we are unable to sustain it.”

According to Amanda Amos, area commercial manager, south Asia, the airline would contact customers who are booked to travel with the airline from Kolkata after 28 March 2009 for making alternate arrangements.

Emphasising that India remained an important market for the BA, the statement said, “we continue to offer our customers an extensive network in India.” It said passengers and cargo customers could avail of BA services from other Indian gateways.

The BA has operated services to Kolkata with breaks since the 1930s and currently operates three weekly flights between the city and London Heathrow.

source: www.domain-b.com

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2 Comments »

  1. [...] Kolkata: British Airways (BA) has announced suspension of its services between the eastern Indian metro of Kolkata and London Heathrow from 28 March 2009, citing lack of business. Read more [...]

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  2. Dr Debabrata Bose Says:

    I travel between Kolkata and London almost thrice every year in connection to my medical profession and I personally never felt that there was any paucity of passengers in this sector. Honestly BA never was serious to advance their business in this sector and never offered competitive fares so as to attract passengers from other airlines. Emirates is doing very well and they are due to increase their frequency from seven flights to twelve flights in a week connecting Dubai. I have travelled by Emirates on no less than four occassions nad have found that they have a large number of London bound passengers on each flight. The matter of fact with BA is they found that other sectors in India were probably more lucrative and hence did not bother to improve on the business in Kolkata by giving nay special offers. Anyway people of Kolkata are to suffer and the worst thing is our National Carrier Air India does not offer a direct connection to London from our city.

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