A branch of the main national airline British Airways, BA City Flyer was established in 2007 with the goal of expanding the carrier’s network of regional flights to smaller destinations in Europe.
This came at a time when British Airways had just sold its regional carrier BA Connect to Flybe and was left without a presence out of the London City Airport (LCY).
The name was a resurrection of the older CityFlyer Express that British Airways operated for 20 years from the 1980s until 2001 while the smaller but more central London airport remained the carrier’s key hub over the next 20 years.
British Airways’ City Flyer cancels five flights from London Stansted
This week, aviation watchdog Sean M spotted that City Flyer has removed five routes out of London Stansted Airport (STN) that it had initially hoped to run in the summer of 2027 from its flying schedule.
The airline had first entered the larger London airport used primarily by low-cost airlines in May 2016 and has over the years run more than 20 different routes to different corners of Europe from this hub. British Airways pulled its Stansted operations in 2020 due to the covid-19 pandemic but resumed them in 2024 with routes to Florence and Ibiza.
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According to the new flying schedule posted for the summer of 2027, the cut City Flyer routes include flights to Bergerac Dordogne Périgord Airport and Nice-Côte d’Azur Airport (NCE) in France, Florence Airport (FLR) in Italy, and Olbia Costa Smeralda Airport (OLB) and Palma de Mallorca Airport (PMI) in Spain.
As those are the only routes which City Flyer had initially been scheduled to run, their suspension suggests that City Flyer may be exiting the Stansted market entirely in the coming year. Representatives of the airline could not be immediately reached for confirmation or comment.
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What to know about British Airways City Flyer Stansted flights in 2026 and 2027
At the moment, the airline is continuing to run weekend flights to Florence, Chambéry, and Geneva as part of its 2026-2027 winter schedule but the latter two are seasonal routes that were never scheduled for the summer season.
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Several of the routes, including the one to Bergerac and Nice in France, will continue to be served by competitors like Ryanair while the route from Stansted to Florence is the only one that will be left without any existing service.
Without comment from British Airways, it is impossible to know the exact reason the routes out of Stansted were targeted for cuts although low frequencies relative to the fuel costs of running planes half-empty appear to be the most probable explanation.
The fleet British Airways utilized for City Flyer routes included five 76-seat Embraer E170 aircraft and five 98-seat Embraer E190 planes. The regional airline continues to serve LCA with more than 20 routes to different destinations in Europe and will likely rework its network to have it be its primary hub (the airline also runs limited seasonal service out of Edinburgh and Glasgow).
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