BRITISH AIRWAYS COMMITMENT TO LATIN AMERICA CONTINUES WITH RIO INCREASES

British Airways is increasing its services to Brazil by doubling its weekly frequency to Rio de Janeiro from three to six flights.

Neil Cottrell, British Airways’ head of network planning, said: “We are experiencing a real increase in demand for Rio and by doubling the number of frequencies, we are able to offer our customers more choice and greater availability. Brazil is also experiencing strong economic growth and this capacity increase is a great opportunity for British Airways to be part of that growth.”

Flights will now depart Heathrow for Rio every day, except Mondays. The departure time remains at 12.15pm, landing in Rio at 9.55pm local time.

The flight will continue to be served by a three class B777, enabling customers to choose from World Traveller (economy), World Traveller Plus (premier economy) and the airline’s fully flat beds in Club World (business class).

Earlier this month, British Airways and Iberia announced the immediate start of codesharing on a new tranche of one another’s flights. This included BA putting its code on Iberia flights from Madrid to San Jose (Costa Rica) and Panama City and Iberia adding its code to BA’s Bahrain, Doha, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Kuwait and Muscat services. Iberia has also added its code onto British Airways’ services to Cape Town and both airlines are now sharing their Johannesburg flights.

Iberia’s flights to Havana also started carrying the BA code from April 15.