British Airways today announced a number of schedule changes which will offer passengers more one-stop flights between London and Melbourne and improved connections between London and Durban.

The changes, from the end of March, are in response to passenger demand, and have been made possible by closer working relationships with Australian alliance partner Qantas and Southern Africa franchise partner, Comair.

British Airways passengers will be able to travel on three new weekly flights to Melbourne, operated by Qantas but flown by the two airlines carrying the British Airways code, taking to 13 the total number of codeshare flights. The new flights connect over Bangkok.

The flights will replace British Airway’s existing daily two-stop flights to Melbourne which have increasingly had difficulties competing with the faster one-stop flight now offered by many other carriers.

In Southern Africa, the new schedules, developed with Comair, will not only offer passengers daily connecting flights between Durban and Johannesburg, but a choice of daily departure times to suit the individual’s requirements. The new revised schedules will replace British Airways’ four times weekly Durban services.

The change to the Durban route follows a review of all of British Airways’ Southern Africa schedules. This has also led to British Airways suspending its twice weekly services from London to Gaborone, Botswana.

The route has not been viable for some time and the decision, although difficult and regrettable, was unavoidable.

The airline is strongly committed to South Africa with 19 flights a week and hopes to increase this shortly.

Charles Gurassa, British Airways’ Director of Passenger and Cargo Business said: “These changes are further evidence of how our alliances and franchises benefit customers with an improved range of flights, frequencies, shorter flight times and connections, and more flexible air fares
“We have the ability to combine our global networks to respond to demands from our passengers for much wider travel options than any airline could provide by itself.”

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