British Airways (BA) has announced plans to introduce more capacity on its flights to Miami from winter 2015/2016 by deploying its Airbus A380 on its two daily flights to Florida’s largest city from its London Heathrow hub. The SuperJumbo will replace the Boeing 747-400s currently serving the route from October 25, 2015 as BA completes the final stage of its network switches across Heathrow’s terminals.

In the coming 12 months, flights to 20 British Airways destinations, including Miami, will change terminals at Heathrow and by the middle of October 2015 all of the airline’s services will depart from either its flagship home of Terminal 5 or the main oneworld alliance Heathrow base in Terminal 3 as it finally moves out of its original Terminal 1 home.

“The acquisition and integration of bmi into British Airways has been a great success but one of its challenges was having to split our flights between three terminals for more than three years while the new Heathrow Terminal 2 was being built,” said Lynne Embleton, director of strategy for British Airways.

“It is great news that we can now look forward to having flights from just two Heathrow terminals. This means that we can offer our customers and those from our oneworld partners smoother journeys, especially if they are connecting between flights,” she added.

The Miami route is currently served from Terminal 5, but from October 14, 2015, alongside its flights to Denver, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Vancouver, Cape Town, Accra and Nairobi, it will be served from Terminal 3. From the summer BA’s flights to Hanover, Luxembourg, Lyon, Marseille and new link to Bilbao also operate from Terminal 3 instead of Terminal 1.

To help prepare for the greater numbers of long-haul customers in Terminal 3 and the introduction of A380 services for the first time, BA will be renovating and extending its check-in areas as well as working with Heathrow Airport to enhance its baggage systems.

British Airways currently operates between 650 and 700 flights each day at Heathrow, carrying an average of 95,000 customers to or from the airport. Once the moves are complete Terminal 5 will be home to just under 120 destinations and Terminal 3 will serve 21 British Airways destinations.

“Being based in two terminals rather than three also means we can now use our short-haul aircraft in a more efficient way and improve the short-haul schedules we can offer our customers,” said Embleton.

The introduction of the A380 on the London – Miami route, which is operated under the auspices of the carrier’s Atlantic Joint Business with American Airlines, US Airways, Iberia and Finnair, will see BA’s available capacity on the route rise by more than a third . Alongside its two daily departures BA has a third rotation that operates three times weekly and which will be suspended following the A380 deployment. Its partner American Airlines also offers a double daily service while rival Virgin Atlantic has a single daily link on the route.

BA will be the third European carrier to deploy its A380s on flights to Miami International Airport after Air France and Lufthansa, meaning all three major global alliances will be offering SuperJumbo flights across the Atlantic to Florida from next year. German national carrier and Star Alliance member Lufthansa launched its flights from Frankfurt in December 2011, while SkyTeam founder Air France will launch its own A380 operation from Paris CDG in December 2014, albeit just through to March 2015.

In our analysis, below, we look at annual bi-directional O&D passenger flows on these three transatlantic routes. The data clearly shows that all three routes have seen peaks and troughs in demand levels across the past ten years but interestingly while the Paris CDG – Miami route has seen numbers rise 54.0 per cent between 2004 and 2103, and Frankfurt – Miami reporting a 16.8 per cent rise in O&D demand, the London Heathrow – Miami route has seen point-to-point traffic decline 8.9 per cent.

Data provided by