The 42 flight routes that were lost to the pandemic

John Arlidge takes a look at the connections that were axed due to diminishing demand – and why they have yet to make a comeback

Hey y’all, saddle up! Virgin Atlantic is launching new direct services to Austin, Texas – the airline’s first new route to the US since 2015.”

Eighteen months after that announcement was made last year, it’s time to dismount and take off the Stetson. Virgin will axe its London to Austin route in January, due to “persistent softening in corporate demand, specifically the tech sector”, the airline has announced. Virgin has also ditched flights from London to Hong Kong and Newark, and from Manchester to Los Angeles and San Francisco.

As corporate travel struggles to get back to 2019 levels – British Airways says that moment won’t come until 2025 – airlines are trimming their networks, which means both business and leisure travellers are losing out. Airlines make up to 80 per cent of their profits from business travellers, so if the big seats are empty, a route is not viable.

That’s why BA no longer flies to Bangkok, Helsinki, Seoul, Osaka, Jeddah and Kuala Lumpur. For the same reason, the cream and beige tailfin of Etihad, the Abu Dhabi flag carrier, is nowhere to be seen at Hong Kong, Brisbane and Ho Chi Minh City these days. There are not enough C-suite executives to sustain Delta’s services from London to Portland, nor Qatar Airways’ London to Canberra route via Doha.

Henry Harteveldt, leading US-based aviation analyst, says: “Airlines fly for profit, not prestige. With the ultimate movable assets – their aircraft fleets – carriers constantly review their route networks to maximise profitability. A route that doesn’t meet financial expectations will be dropped faster than Joe Jonas dumped Taylor Swift.”

Some predominantly leisure or VFR (visiting friends and relatives) routes also no longer make economic sense and have been axed. Virgin Atlantic has dropped London to Havana, Lahore, Islamabad and Tobago. British Airways’ departure screens no longer feature Almeria, Beirut, Bilbao, Calgary, Charleston, Fort Lauderdale, Durban, Nantes, Lima, Milan Bergamo, Genoa, Granada, Muscat and the Seychelles. Qatar has dumped services from London via Doha to Kigali, Mombasa, and Gaborone. Delta no longer flies from London to Las Vegas.

The collapse of some carriers has further reduced connectivity. When Norwegian axed its long-haul operations after the pandemic hit, Britons lost lowcost services from Gatwick to Austin, Buenos Aires, Denver, Las Vegas, Oakland, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, Seattle, Tampa and Singapore.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Airlines are adding routes as well as axing them. Since 2019 Virgin has launched services from London to the Bahamas, Tampa, Turks and Caicos, St Vincent and the Grenadines, the Maldives and from Edinburgh to Orlando. It will soon start flying from London to Sao Paulo, Bengaluru, and from Manchester to Las Vegas. British Airways has added Riga, Belgrade, Florence, Sharm El Sheikh, Fuerteventura, Portland, Cincinnati, Montpellier, Guyana, Aruba and Cologne to its schedules. Etihad has started flights to Osaka, Düsseldorf, Copenhagen, Kolkata, Malaga, Mykonos, Lisbon and Boston.

There is one big exception to the cutbacks – and no prizes for guessing which carrier. The only routes that Emirates operated in 2019 but has not yet reinstated are Edinburgh to Dubai and UK airports to Adelaide, Lagos and Abuja via Dubai. Otherwise, it runs services via Dubai to every destination it served before the pandemic and has added new routes, including Montreal.

It now uses the Airbus A380 on every flight from Heathrow and Gatwick, and has introduced the superjumbo on flights from Glasgow and Birmingham. Between now and March next year there will be five extra flights a week from Heathrow to Dubai, taking the weekly total to 47.

Emirates has also added new cabins on routes departing the UK, installing premium economy on its A380s which fly to Dubai and then on to Bali, Beijing, Casablanca, Shanghai, Singapore and Taiwan.

Is route roulette a temporary trend or a longer term shift? There are signs that some gaps are starting to be plugged. BA will resume flights to Abu Dhabi next year and might return to Seoul. Virgin has just resumed flying to Dubai, a service axed almost five years ago. Other destinations will remain off the departures boards for some time to come for UK carriers – most notably Moscow, St Petersburg and Kyiv, and, for all carriers, Khartoum and Tel Aviv.

As they say at the airport: keep your eyes on the screens.

ii No-fly zone: Virgin has ditched the London to Austin route it launched in 2015; above, airlines are cutting routes as corporate demand struggles to return to 2019 levels