For the first time, Prague will get a direct connection with London City Airport, which is used for its proximity to the financial district, Canary Wharf. The offer of the connections between Prague and London will get even denser, and for the first time, it will be possible to fly to all six London airports from Prague. The current airlines are also adding more lines.
The introduction of the new line was announced on Tuesday by British Airways. Six times a week it will fly to the airport nearest the city centre, with the airplanes Embraer 190 and 170. They will be run by daughter company BA CityFlyer. The operation will start on 29th October 2017.
The plane will leave from Prague at 14:50 on workdays, and from London it will leave at 11:15. On Sunday the plane will leave Prague at 18:50, and leave London at 15:15. The flight takes approximately two hours. During workdays, the capacity of the plane will be 98 people, while the Sunday one is for 76 passengers. The prices of return tickets start at 3300 CZK. It is significantly more than the price of the cheapest tickets from Prague to London, but the passengers save on expensive transport from the airports. The City Airport is also not struggling with frequent overload and long waiting for permission to land, like Heathrow Airport, for example.
The City Airport has a short landing strip, which is why only smaller airplanes can fly there. The biggest one that is permitted to land is Airbus A318. The length of the landing strip is 1500 metres, and the airport has other restrictions, too. Despite this, the number of travellers here is growing. 4.5 million people and over 80 airplanes checked in here last year.
Fifteen times a day to London
The new line will complement the current British Airways flights to London Heathrow Airport, where they fly up to five times a day. Vaclav Havel Airport is expecting the line to be used by roughly 50 thousand people a year.
For a long time, London is the city to which the highest number of passengers fly from Prague. Competition pushes the prices down as well, with return tickets often able to be purchased even for less than 2000 CZK, or on sale for less than 1000 CZK. In the first half of 2017, almost 605 thousand people travelled to London, a 2.5% growth from year to year. “London is the most demanded destination among the direct flights from Prague,” says Marika Janouskova, spokeswoman for the Prague Airport.
The airport is expecting an even bigger number of travellers to London in the second half of the year. Ryanair is also adding flights to London from the winter schedule; some days it will fly up to three times. British Airways will also increase the number of flights to Heathrow.
British Airways fly from Prague to Heathrow Airport five times a day. EasyJet offers two flights a day to Gatwick Airport and one to Stanstead Airport. Wizz Air flies to Luton Airport once a day. The newest addition to Prague-London connections is the offer from Flybe, which flies once a day to Southend Airport. There are up to 14 flights a day between Prague and London in total. With this new line, it will be fifteen.