British Airways, a UK-based air carrier, is to use the slots at Heathrow that it recently obtained with its purchase of low-cost airline, Bmi, to increase its flights to Africa.
The new Africa services will include an extra flight each week to Sierra Leone and Liberia, giving the airline a total of four weekly flights to the two countries, as well as additional flights to Nairobi in Kenya and Johannesburg in South Africa. North African destinations will benefit from increased services to Agadir and Marrakech in Morocco from next winter, and a fourth weekly flight will be added to Tripoli in Libya from September 2 this year.
BA’s general manager for Africa and Europe, Gavin Halliday, said, ‘The acquisition of Bmi has enabled us to expand our flying programme in Africa to serve 18 routes in 15 countries. We now fly to more places, more often than we ever have before in the 80 years we have served the continent. These flights link growing African destinations to London and provide onward connections to the world’s business capitals.’
The Moroccan flights will increase from 7 to 10 per week for Marrakech, and from 2 to 3 per week for Agadir, both from October this year.
The additional flight to the West African destinations of Freetown in Sierra Leone and Monrovia in Liberia is to commence from October 31. It will complement the three existing flights that were launched to those destinations in November last year. Three extra flights from Heathrow to Johannesburg will operate on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, in addition to the present twice-daily service. The new Sunday flight to Nairobi means that the route now has eight flights per week available from BA.
