British Airways’ Challenging New Florence Route

British Airways has just launched a new route to Florence, though the first two flights haven’t operated as scheduled, as noted by PYOK.

The problem with Florence Airport

Not only is Florence an incredibly popular destination with tourists, but it’s also one of the gateways to Tuscany, which is as hot as ever to visit. Fortunately the region is served by two international airports — Florence and Pisa.

There’s only one (not so small) problem — Florence Airport has major operational limitations:

• The runway is “only” 5,118 feet long, making it one of the shorter runways to be used by mainline jets
• The bigger issue is that traffic can only flow in one direction (only runway 5 can be used, and not runway 23, which runs in the other direction), regardless of the winds; that’s due to the high terrain around the airport

There are all kinds of operational considerations that impact takeoff performance, including winds, temperature, takeoff weight, visibility, and more. This is an area where Florence Airport really struggles. When you combine a short runway with unfavorable winds (and no ability to depart in the other direction), any service to Florence Airport by larger aircraft is incredibly fragile.

And that brings us to British Airways’ new service…

British Airways inaugural flight to Florence diverts

As of April 16, 2023, British Airways has launched a new daily service between London Heathrow (LHR) and Florence (FLR), which is supposed to operate with the following schedule:

BA524 London to Florence departing 8:10AM arriving 11:20AM
BA525 Florence to London departing 12:10PM arriving 1:25PM

The 757-mile flight is operated by the Airbus A320neo, which is British Airways’ Heathrow-based aircraft that’s most capable of operating this service.

Unfortunately the first two days of service haven’t exactly gone as planned. On April 16, the inaugural flight to Florence did okay, arriving 19 minutes behind schedule, at 11:39AM.

The return flight was a different story. Due to some moderate winds in Florence (nothing out of the ordinary), the plane couldn’t carry enough fuel to fly all the way back to London. So it instead first flew to Pisa, only 42 miles away, to refuel. The plane took off from Florence at 1:02PM, landed in Pisa at 1:19PM, departed Pisa at 2:33PM, and arrived in London at 3:28PM, over two hours behind schedule.

On April 17 (today), British Airways didn’t even attempt to fly to Florence. Instead the airline operated this flight to and from Pisa, and the airline is sending passengers between the two airports by bus.

It’s going to be interesting to see how this service evolves. Admittedly winds are probably a bit stronger than usual at the moment, though it doesn’t change the fact that it will be hard to operate this route reliably, especially with a full payload. And while winds might be an issue right now, much hotter temperatures in the peak of summer could also prove to be problematic.

I’m also curious to see how this is handled when it comes to EU261 compensation, in situation where passengers misconnect. I’m sure British Airways will claim that these operational issues are due to weather, and therefore outside of the carrier’s control. But that’s also a pretty disingenuous argument when other airlines are able to operate their service much more reliably. The issue, really, is that British Airways doesn’t have smaller aircraft based at Heathrow.

Bottom line

British Airways has launched a new daily flight between London Heathrow and Florence, which is a great new link to Tuscany. The issue is that Florence Airport has a short runway combined with challenging operational requirements. Unless weather conditions are perfect, this route may face some ongoing issues.

It’ll be interesting to keep an eye on this new service, and see if the airline just had really bad luck with its first couple of days of service, or if this continues. If the issues persist, one has to wonder if this service will be maintained.

What do you make of British Airways’ Florence issues?