British Airways plans to fly the tiny Airbus A318 across the pond

British Airways has announced its plans to fly on the London City – New York JFK route starting this October.

Now, news like this normally gets ignored by us, unless it involves cool and interesting locations, neither of which are included in this announcement.

What makes this news worth writing about, is that the route will be serviced by the small Airbus A318 plane. This plane is seriously small for a transatlantic jump. It is based off the Airbus A320, the same plane used by Jetblue on their routes.

The planes will be configured with business class seating only, so British Airways is clearly hoping there is enough cash left in the banking world to fly people between London City and Wall Street.

On the way to New York, the plane will have to stop in Shannon, because London City airport is not large enough to let it take off with a full load of fuel! Shannon has the added bonus of being home to a US Customs and Immigration facility, which will prevent passengers from having to deal with long lines at JFK. This also means that BA will be flying its first ever domestic arrival at JFK.

I sure hope BA knows what they are doing, because this route sounds like more work than it is worth. Fingers crossed that their beancounters did their homework, and this won’t be the beginning of another route doomed to be canned after a few months.