Record Breaking: London Heathrow To New York City Now Has 32 Daily Flights

JetBlue will launch a daytime service from New York JFK to London Heathrow this summer. It'll replace one of its two daily flights to London Gatwick, meaning the carrier's London operation will remain at 3 daily. It is why Heathrow-JFK now has 32 daily flights, its highest number yet.

If the whole London-New York City market is examined (JFK and Newark combined), up to 36 daily flights are planned next summer, according to the latest Cirium data. Aside from a handful of days in 2008 with 37, that is the joint highest number of flights ever, last held 15 years ago.

36 daily London-NYC flights

As of January 6th, up to 36 daily flights are scheduled to run next summer (some days have slightly fewer). American, British Airways, Delta, JetBlue, Norse Atlantic, United, and Virgin operate them. Examining the peak summer, the breakdown is as follows:

	Heathrow-JFK	Gatwick-JFK	Heathrow-Newark	Gatwick-Newark	Total
British Airways	8 daily	1 daily	3 daily	0	12 daily
United	0	0	7 daily	0	7 daily
Virgin	6 daily	0	0	0	6 daily
American	4 daily	0	0	0	4 daily
Delta	2 daily	1 daily	0	0	3 daily
JetBlue	2 daily	1 daily	0	0	3 daily
Norse	0	1 daily	0	0	1 daily
Total	22 daily	4 daily	10 daily		36 daily

Photo: Vincenzo Pace | Simple Flying

32 daily: record Heathrow-NYC

Analyzing schedules from 2004-2022 reveals that, at 22 daily, Heathrow-JFK has never had so many flights, while Gatwick-JFK's 4 daily is the joint highest.

With 10 daily, Heathrow-Newark returns to a frequency briefly held in summer 2022 and before that in 2017. It means that, at 32 daily, Heathrow-NYC has surpassed its previous record. Note that Continental last served Gatwick-Newark in 2008; it ended following the shift to Heathrow enabled by EU-US open skies.

Click here for Heathrow-JFK flights.

British Airways Boeing 777-336(ER) G-STBA

Photo: Vincenzo Pace I Simple Flying.

Stay aware: Sign up for my weekly new routes newsletter.

Seats per flight down to just 241

As the figure below for August indicates, seats and frequencies for London-NYC are at a level not seen for many years. Frequency, in particular, has grown, helped by lower-capacity aircraft. Indeed, London-NYC seats per flight will be just 241 in August, the lowest for decades. In August 2005, for example, it was 298, while it was 259 in August 2019.

It is from the removal of BA's 747-400s, very high premium equipment by United, Delta, and JetBlue, and Virgin's lower-capacity aircraft. Average fares and yields will hopefully do very well.

Click here for Heathrow-Newark flights.

Source of data: Cirium.

Discover more aviation news.

What does a day look like?

On randomly chosen August 13th, the following is all scheduled to operate. Notice JetBlue's 08:25 departure from Heathrow. It replaces its 09:10 service from Gatwick. It would almost certainly have preferred an early morning arrival at Heathrow (it would have arrived in Gatwick at 07:10), but Heathrow slots are like gold dust. Expect it to change if/when it secures more Heathrow slots, especially as that would likely yield (!) better yields than a daytime operation.

Click here for Gatwick-JFK flights.