BA to reduce Inverness-London flights over summer

British Airways is to cut back on flights between Inverness and London Heathrow over the summer.

The airline said it was merging some of its low occupancy flights to help it through a challenging period.

BA said it was having to build more resilience into its services to help it better manage staff sickness and vacancies.

The link between the Highlands' biggest airport and London is seen as hugely important by local businesses.

Currently passengers can fly from Inverness in the morning and return from Heathrow in the evening of the same day.

Highlands and Islands Airports Limited (Hial), which runs Inverness Airport, said BA's decision to reduce the number of flights appeared to be a temporary adjustment. It said it understood the move to be a temporary adjustment due to happen from 4 to 25 July.

• English lockdown hits Inverness-Heathrow flights

• BA to expand Inverness to London service

• BA reinstates Inverness-Heathrow route

A BA spokesman said: "The past few weeks have been challenging and so we're completely focused on three priorities: our customers, supporting the biggest recruitment drive in our history and increasing our operational resilience, to help provide certainty for our customers.

"We've taken the decision to reduce our schedule by merging some low occupancy flights and flights to destinations with multiple services each day and using larger aircraft, giving customers the maximum flexibility to either rebook with us or another airline as close to their original departure time as possible, or to receive a full refund."

Inverness Airport general manager Graeme Bell said the aviation sector had re-emerged quite strongly from the pandemic, but there remained challenges for airlines as demand for travel had picked up.

He said: "The Heathrow-Inverness link remains a popular route and we are hopeful BA will reinstate the 07:00 Heathrow flight as soon as it is feasible to do so."

Stewart Nicol, of Inverness Chamber of Commerce, said he was not surprised by BA's decision given the challenges airlines faced in meeting increased demand for flights.

He said: "This is a strong route for BA so I do expect it to be a temporary situation."

Mr Nicol said the flights were important to business travellers and also UK and international tourists.

BA restored its services between Inverness and Heathrow in 2016 after a 20 year hiatus.

Businesses in the region had been calling for the resumption of the service for years.Since the start of the pandemic there have been spells when flights were suspended due to low demand but they have been fully back up and running since the beginning of March.