Thursday, March 26, 2020
As the world goes into a coronavirus lockdown, the London City airport which mostly caters to the business travellers will shut down this evening and not re-open until May at the earliest. In 2019, the airport in the capital’s docklands experienced the busiest-ever year and expected record numbers of passengers this year expecting an average of more than 16,000 travellers per day.
An airport statement mentioned that they made the decision to temporarily suspend all commercial and private flights from the airport.
In this fast-moving and unprecedented situation they think this is the responsible thing to do for the safety and wellbeing of our staff, passengers and everyone associated with the airport.
From Wednesday 25 March evening it will start and is expected to last until the end of April and it will be under review.
British Airways’ CityFlyer subsidiary is the airport’s main operator and has about two dozen routes.
BA1 and BA2 is the airport’s flagship route which connected London’s financial centre with New York JFK aboard a business-class only Airbus A318. This route may not return.
Earlier Flybe was a significant competitor, but the airline collapsed in February 2020.
Other important operators are Alitalia, KLM, Lufthansa, Luxair and Swiss.
An unprecedented slump in passenger numbers is being experienced by airlines as the world goes into lockdown.
In terminals 2 and 3 Manchester airport closed operations and consolidated all flights in terminal 1 and Gatwick has shut three of its six piers.
