Alaska Airlines crosses the Atlantic for the first time April 28. Meanwhile, nine days earlier, British Airways restores a UK nonstop to St. Louis, the first since 2003.
The Route Nobody’s Covering
The travel blogosphere is busy writing about Alaska Airlines’ April 28 Seattle-Rome launch. It is, fairly, a milestone as Alaska’s first-ever transatlantic route, a flagship 787-9, a genuine expansion of where the airline competes. Delta counter-announced matching Seattle–Rome and Seattle–Barcelona services before the launch even occurred. Our colleagues across the BoardingArea network alone has published a dozen variations of the story.
Nine days earlier, something perhaps as consequential happens quietly.
Today, April 19, British Airways launches four-times-weekly nonstop service between London Heathrow and St. Louis Lambert International Airport. BA221 departs LHR at 16:25 and arrives in STL at 19:30; BA220 departs STL at 22:00 and arrives back at Heathrow at 12:05 the following day. The aircraft is a Boeing 787-8, with all three BA cabins — World Traveller, World Traveller Plus, and Club World (business cabin.)
It is the first UK nonstop flight to St. Louis in 22 years.
The 22-Year Gap Tells The Real Story
British Caledonian began St. Louis-London service in 1980. The route passed to Trans World Airlines in the mid-1980s and became part of TWA’s small but important international footprint from its St. Louis hub. American Airlines inherited it in the 2001 TWA acquisition and kept it alive for exactly two years. AA terminated the London Gatwick route in October 2003.
That was the last UK nonstop from St. Louis.
In the 22 years since, the city’s European service has been almost nonexistent. Wow Air briefly flew to Reykjavik in 2018 before the airline collapsed. Lufthansa launched Frankfurt service in June 2022, which remains. That’s it. A mid-major American city with a metropolitan population over 2.8 million, the twenty-first-largest metro area in the United States, has had essentially no direct European service for two decades.
Why BA Sees What American Couldn’t
The easy read is that BA is opportunistic, STL (like many municipalities around the United States) offered incentives, the local business community lobbied hard, and a foreign carrier picked up what a US airline abandoned. That’s partly true. The more interesting read is that BA is executing a pattern. The city’s TWA history shows that St. Louis has a populous base that embraced international markets both for business and for personal travel.
Look at where British Airways has added or restored US service in the last three years: Portland (PDX), Pittsburgh (PIT), Nashville, and now St. Louis. These are not primary coastal hubs. These mid-market American cities that post-9/11 hub consolidation orphaned, cities that used to have widebody transatlantic service and lost it when US legacies rationalized around their biggest hubs.
BA sees that the traffic didn’t disappear. It was suppressed by the lack of nonstop product. Feed through Chicago or Dallas or Atlanta, and the one-stop friction is real, but offer a nonstop, and origin demand materializes. The oneworld AAdvantage and Avios co-brand base in middle America is larger than most US network planners assume when they model routes from their coastal command centers. In the case of Pittsburgh, the city guaranteed the route with subsidies for 4x week service but has moved it to 5x, 6x, and through the summer, daily service due to demand.
American Airlines killed the St. Louis route. Twenty-two years later, its oneworld partner picks it up. That tells you something about where AA’s planning lens points versus where BA’s aims. The British Airways St. Louis-London route adds to a constellation of more than 30 North American gateways of which 28 are in the United States.
The Points Angle
London-St Louis is redeemable via AAdvantage miles, British Airways Avios, Iberia Avios, and every other oneworld currency but adds considerable fuel surcharges.
A few things to know about the product. The 787-8 Club World is the older Club Suite / existing Club World business class, not the newer Club Suite found on BA’s 787-9s and refurbished 777s. Expect a 2-3-2 or 1-2-1 layout depending on configuration, not category-leading. World Traveller Plus (premium economy) is BA’s underrated sweet spot at this distance.
Availability at launch remains tight. Four weekly frequencies equates to 208 business class seats per week in each direction, a fraction of what daily widebody routes offer. Saver-level awards should be sought and booked the moment they open.
What The Next 24 Months Look Like
If BA’s St. Louis experiment works, and there’s reason to think it will, given the 22-year suppressed demand and the incentive structure, I expect announcements into markets like Kansas City, and Indianapolis. Aer Lingus is already executing this exact playbook with the A321XLR (Raleigh-Durham, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Nashville, and Pittsburgh all launched this year). KLM and Air France via Delta have been quieter, but the same logic applies.
But the other part of this story has a place too. Alaska will continue to expand its map as well. It’s already announced a launch for Seattle-Iceland service on a 737 making it one of the longest routes on the type. But Alaska’s move this week is substantial because it is the very beginning of its trans-Atlantic journey. If it wants to be able to expand globally, it seems that smaller outposts on single-aisle aircraft are part of that picture. It’s significant that Alaska is commencing Rome service, but those two markets will have no trouble performing, it’s not particularly ground breaking as a city pair. St. Louis is a different statement and one that British Airways is likely to prove out.
Conclusion
Congratulations, truly, to Alaska Airlines for running an incredible airline, pulling off a massive conversion from regional power to flag carrier. Their efforts will no doubt be rewarded handsomely, and I personally want to fly the route at some point in the future. But understanding British Airways move to St. Louis is more of a glimpse into where transatlantic aviation is actually going, the mid-market American cities.
What do you think?
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