British Airways is planning to launch a short-haul budget airline – I’ve seen this one before

Agile and competitive: no, not me, but British Airways’ planned budget subsidiary at Gatwick, which starts flying next March. Plus ça change...

Half a century ago, one of British Airways’ predecessors had exactly the same idea. BEA wanted to compete against low-cost competitors such as Laker Airways, but was hamstrung by generous employment agreements. So it created BEA Airtours – using older planes and working pilots and cabin crew harder, to be competitive.

On 6 March 1970, the first commercial flight took off from Gatwick, destination Palma. A few years later, almost certainly before you were born, I took my first job there – cleaning the offices and duty rooms.

In 1974, the offshoot became British Airtours after BEA merged with BOAC. When BA took over British Caledonian, the budget subsidiary became Caledonian Airways and was eventually sold off.

At the time, British Airways was doing just fine and no one had heard of easyJet or Ryanair. Once the no-frills revolution began, BA started its own low-cost subsidiary, Go, based at Stansted. But within four years it was sold off again – and eventually acquired by easyJet.

Gatwick remained part of BA’s empire, but was as unloved as it was unprofitable. Over the decades I have watched a whole series of strategies to try to turn around BA’s Gatwick operation and make it profitable, including a short-lived and highly unsuccessful effort to make it “the hub without the hubbub”.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, British Airways had developed an impressive and profitable network of long-haul premium leisure routes from Gatwick to Florida, the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean. The cash it made helped to offset the struggling short-haul network, which was up against Britain’s biggest budget airline, easyJet. All other things being equal, I chose BA over its upstart rival every time, due to its absurdly generous free cabin baggage allowance of 46kg.

British Airways last flew short-haul from Gatwick in March 2020. BA’s new boss, Sean Doyle, warned staff that if short-haul flying is to be revived at the Sussex airport, costs must be slashed and productivity improved. If he succeeds, travellers will be the main beneficiary – as “BA Lite” provides with real competition for the budget giant, easyJet.

I’m not expecting the baggage allowance to stay. But I wonder if they need an office cleaner? I could be agile. And competitive.

Yours,

Simon Calder

Travel correspondent