British Airways Replaced Concorde With A First Class-Only Airbus That Had To Refuel In Ireland

For more than 25 years, it was possible to fly from New York to London in under three hours, all while being pampered with first class luxury on the British Airways Concorde. Then, in November 2003, all that stopped. To try to recapture some of the luxury that came with flying Concorde, BA put on a special first class only flight from London to New York, and it was wild.

The service ran from 2009 until 2020, running up to twice a day and using the same BA1 to BA4 flight numbers that Concorde used to fly, according to Instagram user @abbiecheesey. The service was operated on two Airbus A318 aircraft that BA purchased specially for the route, and each was fitted out entirely with first class seats.

The interior of the plane was in a two-plus-two layout, meaning that each craft could carry 32 passengers at a time. Another unique factor was where the flights took off from. This wasn’t a service that ran from British Airways’ hub at Heathrow, which is about 45 minutes outside London, it ran from London City Airport, which is inside the North Circular highway that circumnavigates the capital.

However, where Concorde could take first class travelers direct from London to New York in just three hours, the revived BA1 service couldn’t quite manage that thanks to its takeoff and landing airport of choice. As Head For Points explains: