Air China to ditch Chengdu-Gatwick in favour of Heathrow

Air China looks as though it will be switching up its recently launched non-stop flights between Chengdu and London Gatwick next year with the service instead shifting over to London’s larger Heathrow Airport.

According to the airline’s online booking page, flight CA423 will take on a different time slot from April 2, 2019 onwards and fly from Chengdu to Heathrow Terminal 2 rather than to Gatwick.

The new time slots will see flights take off from Chengdu at midday rather than just after midnight as they currently do, with a mid-afternoon arrival at Heathrow as opposed to an early morning arrival at Gatwick.

The return CA424 flight will similarly fly at different at a different time slot from April 2 onwards. This change sees the flight leave Heathrow late at night and arrive in Chengdu the following mid-afternoon, rather than departing Gatwick in the late morning and arriving in the Sichuan province capital in the early morning the next day.

Flights will retain their Tuesday, Friday, Sunday timetable.

Current schedule Chengdu-London Gatwick

Future schedule Chengdu-London Heathrow

But while Air China is making changes to its destination and time slots, one thing that doesn’t appear to be switching is the aircraft that flies the route.

Air China will continue to fly its high-density Airbus A330-200 on the route, industry website airlineroute.net reports, which the airline outfits with a 2-2-2 configuration business class cabin, and a 2-4-2 premium economy and economy cabin.

Last month, Air China announced that its Beijing-London Heathrow service will be one of four European routes to see its new A350-900 aircraft starting February 1, 2019. Air China was the country’s first carrier to take delivery of the A350 back in August this year.