British Airways (BA) plans to restart flights from London Heathrow (LHR) to Cape Town (CPT) in South Africa and Cancun (CUN) in Mexico in coming weeks.

The carrier is taking advantage of the UK government removing a host of countries from its COVID-19 “red list,” which prevented passengers from those countries from traveling to the UK.

The LHR-CUN route will commence Oct. 22 and operate daily. BA noted it will also be flying the LHR-Mexico City (MEX) route 5X-weekly by Nov. 6.

The LHR-CPT route will be operated 3X-weekly starting in November, to increase to 2X-daily in December. The carrier also plans to increase its flying on the LHR-Johannesburg (JNB) to 2X-daily in December.

BA additionally said LHR service to South American points Buenos Aires (EZE) and Sao Paulo (GRU) is “set to return in time for Christmas.”

BA chairman and CEO Sean Doyle said: “It finally feels like we are seeing light at the end of a very long tunnel. Britain will benefit from this significant reduction in red list countries, and now it’s time to turn our attention to eradicating testing for fully vaccinated travelers to ensure we don’t lose our place on the global stage.”

BA is planning a series of route restarts to US cities this month and in November as the US prepares to allow entry to vaccinated passengers.

Photo credit: Joe Pries