BA Begins New Puerto Rico Service
Flag carrier British Airways began the first of its cheap flights to Puerto Rico on Monday – the first time it has offered a route to the Caribbean country.
The service leaves London's Gatwick Airport on Mondays and Fridays, offering cheap flights to San Juan, the Puerto Rican capital, flying via Antigua. This new route follows Sunday's launch of its new cheap flights to Argentina's capital Buenos Aires, as the expanded BA summer schedule came into effect.
Previously, the airline only offered cheap flights to Buenos Aires via Sao Paulo in Brazil, before the new daily direct service from Heathrow Airport.
Despite worries from the Caribbean holidays industry about rising levels of Air Passenger Duty (APD), BA has enhanced its services in the region with more cheap flights to Antigua and Barbados. It has increased the frequency of its Antigua flights from five to six a week – partly to accommodate the extra demand for the cheap flights to Puerto Rico – and has upped the frequency of cheap flights to Barbados from Gatwick from 10 to 12 every week.
On top of all this, BA will now offer more cheap flights to Cancun in Mexico – three flights a week – and seven cheap flights to Tampa in Florida each week, also from Gatwick.
The only service reduction for the summer schedule is a cut in the number of cheap flights to Orlando in Florida, which will be decreased from nine to seven a week. Other carriers who launched new routes at the weekend include budget airline easyJet, with new cheap flights to Jordan and Bologna in Italy from Gatwick, plus new bmi flights to Casablanca and Marrakech from Heathrow.
Airlines and Airport News posted by 
on 30 March 2011
