on www.justplanenews.com there's an article AA is adding a second daily nonstop CLT-LHR Apparently the first flight has been doing very well with over 70k seats sold using the A-330-300 and the second one will use A330-200
jcw said:I thought AA was shutting CLT down and moving everything to MIA
commavia said:both of these will come at the expense of the second FRA flights from each hub (since those FRA routes are, obviously, no longer inter-alliance hub-to-hub now that USAirways is in oneworld).
nycbusdriver said:Now that we're in the thirdworld alliance (at least in Germany), I understand we're pissing off all those poor, unsuspecting customers who booked Star Alliance connections in FRA before the merger and find themselves deplaning in the thirdworld terminal and having lots of headaches switching over to the Lufthansa side. Same in MUC.
nycbusdriver said:It would not surprise me that all CLT - Germany flights will be gone in the fall, and only PHL-MUC and one PHL-FRA will remain for the near future after 2014.
zethya said:If this is the Cyprus Slot pair, the LHR Arrival/Departure times from CLT will be super sub optimum for business travelers.
zethya said:The CLT fans hope for a BA flight may no longer be feasible as 3x LHR seems a bit unreasonable.
I agree. Presumably, the existing CLT-LHR flight is well-timed for traffic destined to London, and it's reasonable to assume that it's carrying most or all of the CLT-hub to LHR O&D (including the logical connections at CLT to London). If a second flight arrives at LHR between about noon and 1:30 pm, that leaves plenty of time for onward connections to the evening flights (India, S Africa, Middle East, etc). Plus, tourists don't mind arriving LHR in early afternoon, as it means that by time they clear immigration and travel to the city, it's check-in time at their hotels.commavia said:Indeed, I've now read elsewhere that, as might have been expected, the second eastbound flight is scheduled for a 2230 CLT departure (so a ~1130 LHR arrival) - perfectly timed to not only meet inbound flow traffic from the 2200 connecting bank, but also provide many people connecting from around the east coast with the ability to depart their originating cities relatively late and still connect onward to LHR and beyond.
Now that's what I call a "stretch".commavia said:............................
I wouldn't be surprised if the second CLT-LHR eventually went to a daily BA 777, and the existing US flight was upgauged to a 2-class AA 777.
I kind of thinking the same thing. 1:30pm arrival at LHR is still ok for onward BA connections. Not only Africa & Mid-East, but it kind of works for Europe connections too. I'm going to guess most LHR-Europe connections on BA are approx. 2/2.5hrs at most, so with the 1:30 pm arrival there is still a chance to connect to the last couple BA flights to most major EU cities.FWAAA said:If a second flight arrives at LHR between about noon and 1:30 pm, that leaves plenty of time for onward connections to the evening flights (India, S Africa, Middle East, etc). Plus, tourists don't mind arriving LHR in early afternoon, as it means that by time they clear immigration and travel to the city, it's check-in time at their hotels.
More details about the new flight:
We know it will be operated on an A330-200 and that departs Charlotte at 10:30pm and arrives in London at 11:25am. The return flight will depart London at 2:25pm and arrive back in Charlotte at 6:20pm. The new flight will have the flight numbers:
CLT-LHR- US 732
LHR-CLT- US 733
The same flight #s that CLT-LGW-CLT operated under, until it became US 730/731 when it switched to Heathrow.