Can "son of Concorde" succeed?

Six years after grounding the supersonic jet, British Airways is bringing back the call-sign "Speedbird One" for its flagship jet from London City to New York. While passengers on what was dubbed "The Rocket" could expect to be halfway across the Atlantic within two hours of leaving Heathrow, passengers on "son of Concorde" will only be taking off from Shannon in Ireland, where the Airbus is obliged to refuel on the westbound leg. Yet BA believes the new link will attract an exclusive, rich clientele to a scruffy corner of London E16.
Anyone at London City airport last Tuesday morning would have seen a plane endlessly circling, touching the runway and heading skyward once more. A strange-looking plane, too – the biggest to use City airport, yet the smallest in the British Airways Airbus fleet. It is an A318, a foreshortened version of the narrow-bodied jets flown by BA and easyJet. But unlike those planes, this is a small aircraft with big ambitions: to fly 32 high-achieving individuals 3,500 miles from the doorstep of the City of London's nearest airport to New York JFK.
Business-class-only aviation is nothing new. Since 2002, Lufthansa has operated narrow-bodied Boeing 737s and Airbus A319s on a range of routes with strong demand from business travellers but little appetite from economy passengers. Today, though, the German airline offers only a pair of esoteric little links to India: Frankfurt to Pune, and Munich to Mumbai. Long-term success with all-business-class transatlantic routes has proved as elusive for Lufthansa as it has for other airlines. Last month British Airways closed its OpenSkies operation from Amsterdam to New York, leaving only a Paris Orly-JFK link. From London the attrition rate is even higher: in the past two years, three airlines have gone bust trying to make money flying business travellers to New York: Eos, MaxJet and Silverjet all lost millions bravely trying to prove the concept. So what makes BA's link from London City any different?
"It's an airport on the doorstep to our most important corporate clients," says Michael Johnson of British Airways. The airline knows many regular transatlantic flyers, particularly Gold Card holders, work in the eastern half of London, a long slog from Heathrow. "Also, because we have OnAir connectivity [effectively turning the aircraft into a mobile phone cell handling data] it means that our business travellers can work and stay connected to the office," says Johnson.
26/09/09 The Independent, UK

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Categories: Foreign Sep 2009, New Sep 2009