British Airways Cuts These 4 Routes From London

British Airways is to end four routes. Three of them are from London Heathrow: Cologne, Riga, and Stuttgart. The other is London City-Frankfurt, which is served by its BA CityFlyer Unit. All four links are no longer bookable after the end of March, when BA, like other northern carriers, switches to summer schedules. Sean Moulton on X was the first to notice the changes.

All airlines end routes, and BA is no exception. For space reasons, let’s only focus on Heathrow. In 2024, it ceased flying from the UK’s busiest airport to Belgrade, Beijing Daxing, Funchal, Islamabad, Kos, Pula, and Turin. In 2025, these markets were axed: Bilbao, Grenoble, Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen, Izmir, and Kuwait.

BA Will End These 4 Routes

Half of the routes only resumed in 2023, having previously been flown years before. BA clearly does not think it is worth continuing with them relative to what else it could do with the equipment and the slots. It is currently unknown how it will use them. Heathrow-St. Louis service begins next year, but the times don’t really tally with the routes being removed.

Like Riga flights, Cologne service returned in 2023. As the city is located close to Düsseldorf, BA will simply consolidate there. It serves Heathrow-Düsseldorf 33 times a week. Unlike Cologne, which BA only serves half as much as Eurowings in mid-November, it is the dominant carrier to Düsseldorf. That German airport has higher fares than Cologne from Heathrow, but also higher charges. BA CityFlyer ended City-Düsseldorf flights in 2024.

BA Only Filled 70% Of Riga Seats

According to UK Civil Aviation Authority data for January-August 2025, BA transported almost 46,000 round-trip Riga passengers. In a completely unrelated comparison, that was far more than Air Astana’s Almaty-Heathrow traffic.

As Cirium Diio data shows that BA had 64,800 seats for sale, it only filled 70% of its capacity, which is pretty poor. And given the extent of the indirect competition, as discussed below, the yields were probably iffy, too. Booking data suggests that four in ten passengers connected elsewhere, which would not have helped with yield performance.

When flights are considered, BA only has 12% of the London-Riga market in the analyzed week in November. It competes indirectly with Ryanair from Stansted (13 weekly) and airBaltic from Gatwick (nine weekly). Wizz Air ceased Luton-Riga in 2023, which may have helped to motivate BA’s return. Norwegian started Gatwick-Riga flights in March 2025, but its summer seasonal operation is not (yet?) scheduled for 2026.

London-Stuttgart Will Now Have Only 1 Airline…

With BA’s exit, only Eurowings will continue to serve this market. This is quite surprising for a local market of almost 250,000 round-trip passengers in the past year. Nearly 700 people traveled daily. It is not quite this simple. Ryanair serves Stansted-Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden for the region, with 148,000 passengers last year. However, the airport, which has much lower charges than Stuttgart, is about 68 miles (109 km) from the more well-known German city.

Other airlines have flown between Stuttgart and London. Lufthansa itself served Heathrow until 2012, when the route shifted to Germanwings and eventually Eurowings. The now-defunct Germanwings also had Stuttgart-Stansted flights until 2017, replaced by Eurowings until 2018. Meanwhile, easyJet served Gatwick-Stuttgart between 2015 and 2020, while Lufthansa had London City flights between 2006 and 2007.

The lack of service is despite Stuttgart Airport’s catchment area having 19 million people within a two-hour drive, the region being home to the HQs of Porsche, Mercedes, etc., and having a major presence of multiple other large companies. Perhaps it epitomizes the problem with German aviation: high costs and often relatively low yields. Air France will end Stuttgart flights soon, with fast trains from Paris not helping the case. Stuttgart’s last flight to the US was with Delta in 2024.