British Airways (BA) has announced plans to resume its flights between London and the Polish city of Krakow, but instead of flying from Gatwick Airport it will provide a key network link from its main hub at Heathrow Airport. The airline will offer a four times weekly link from May 1, 2015 using a mix of Airbus A319 and A320 equipment.

This will be the only link between London Heathrow and Krakow, which will be the host city of Routes Europe in 2016. Alongside the point-to-point demand it will also facilitate transfer traffic to and from the wider network of British Airways and its oneworld partners from and to the UK capital.

It is currently five years since BA last served Krakow after closing its route from London Gatwick in October 2009 but links between the city and London have been maintained by easyJet to Gatwick and Southend and Ryanair to Stansted.

BA will offer a split schedule on the route with morning flights on Mondays, a lunchtime and afternoon link on Fridays and an evening rotation on Wednesdays and Sundays. This suggests this schedule has been put together utilising some spare slots that the carrier is not currently utilising at Heathrow Airport.

This will be BA’s second route to Poland and will complement its double daily flights to Warsaw. There is an intense rivalry between Poland’s two major cities and while Warsaw is currently the centre of the country’s political and economic life, Krakow feels that, as the country’s former capital and the resting place of its kings, it is their city which can claim to be the cultural heart of the country.

"We have a long history of flying to Poland and opening a route to the country's second city now offers far greater choice for customers,” said Neil Cottrell, head of planning, BA. "With a sizeable Polish community in London, we know the route will be popular with Poles visiting friends and relatives. It will also serve our business travellers well as Krakow is an important economic hub which has seen significant UK investment and trade."

In our analysis, below, we look in greater detail at bi-directional O&D passenger demand between London and Krakow over the past ten years, by departure and arrival point in the UK capital. The data shows that in each of the past three years around 12,000 passengers a year already fly between London Heathrow and Krakow via another European point.

Data provided by