Let’s compare and contrast two airlines and their recent announcement as to flights to the Gulf.
First, British Airways has announced plans to increase flights from London Heathrow to Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. The Heathrow-Bahrain service will expand from the current three flights per week to daily from 27 October, while the Heathrow-Abu Dhabi route, which was suspended for the summer 2025 season, will return with a daily service this winter.
BA will also increase to flights to Riyadh to 12 per week this winter, rising to 14 from summer 2026, while Jeddah will increase from four flights per week to five next summer.
BA said the expanded schedule “supports growing demand across the region and has been strategically timed to ensure customers have seamless onward connections via London Heathrow to more than 200 destinations worldwide”.
Emirates will operate 48 weekly flights to and from London Heathrow this winter season, and a total of up to 13 daily services from the capital in the coming months.
The Gulf carrier has announced an additional Heathrow-Dubai frequency, adding to add to Emirates’ existing six daily flights to and from Heathrow, starting 26 October and operating daily except Fridays, and which will use a 777-300 in contrast to the other Emirates services which use A380s.
In addition to the 48 weekly flights to Heathrow, Emirates currently operates twice-daily services to Stansted, and three flights per day to Gatwick, which will rise to four flights per week from 8 February, 2026, using the carrier’s newest Airbus A350 aircraft.
At that point Emirates will offer up to 13 daily flights to the UK capital, or a total of 90 weekly flights. And that is just Emirates only, leaving aside the expansions from Etihad and Qatar among others.
The difference in scale and ambition here is monumental and just further underlines how BA is retreating into an essentially transatlantic specialist with a the old BEA shorthaul service tagged on. What a difference from BA’s global ambitions of yesteryear.
Albeit, in the context of the transatlantic focus, BA has announced the launch of flights to St.Louis, which is great news and a perfect excuse for a short trip to that fascinating bit of the states.