British Airways (BA) will fly from London Heathrow Airport (LHR) to Fuerteventura (FUE) in Spain’s Canary Islands starting December 13, 2026. The route will run twice weekly through the winter season, using the 156-seat Airbus A320ceo. It marks the first time Heathrow has ever had scheduled flights to Fuerteventura, according to a report by Simple Flying.
The new service replaces a Gatwick operation that BA Euroflyer had planned at the same twice-weekly frequency. It also brings BA’s Spanish network from Heathrow to six destinations for the winter. The move fits a broader pattern at BA, where new route launches keep appearing alongside long-standing service cuts elsewhere in the network.
British Airways’ Heathrow Operation Still Anchors its Network
Heathrow remains BA’s main base by a wide margin. The airline averages 331 daily departures from the airport in 2026, a figure that has slipped 0.8% compared with 2025, partly because of suspended and removed routes.
BA alone accounts for just over half of Heathrow’s departures. That share climbs to 59% once other oneworld alliance members are included, still short of the 70% threshold typically used to define a “fortress hub.” Schedule data from Cirium Diio cited by Simple Flying shows BA plans 161 routes from Heathrow in the second half of 2026, and Fuerteventura is now one of them.
British Airways Confirms First Heathrow-Fuerteventura Flights from December 13
News of the route first surfaced through aviation tracker Sean Moulton on the social media platform X. BA has since made the flights bookable. The airline will operate twice weekly, on Thursdays and Sundays, departing Heathrow in the morning and returning from Fuerteventura the same day.
Thursday flights leave Heathrow at 7:05 am and land in Fuerteventura at 11:30 am local time. The return departs at 12:30 pm and arrives back at 4:50 pm. Sunday flights depart Heathrow at 10:05 am, arrive at 2:30 pm, and the return leg runs from 3:40 pm to 8:00 pm.
Schedule data from Cirium confirms that LHR-FUE flights have never existed before. The Canary Islands stay warm through winter, making them one of the few sunshine destinations within reach of the UK during the colder months.
How The New A320ceo Service Compares to Its Gatwick Predecessor
The Fuerteventura route already has a long history in BA’s wider network, just not from Heathrow. GB Airways operated the LGW-FUE link on BA’s behalf until 2005. BA mainline flew it again between 2014 and 2018.
BA Euroflyer, the airline’s lower-cost short-haul unit, launched the Gatwick service in November 2023 to help boost winter performance. Moving the route to Heathrow, where airport charges and fees run higher, points to stronger-than-expected demand.
The aircraft assigned to the new route brings some notable features:
- Airbus A320ceo with 156 seats in a single-class layout
- Twice-weekly operation on Thursdays and Sundays
- Same frequency previously planned at Gatwick under Euroflyer
- First scheduled Heathrow-Fuerteventura pairing on record
Passenger Demand Data Shows Fuerteventura Trails Other Canary Islands
Booking figures from 2025 show just over 5,000 round-trip passengers flew between Heathrow and Fuerteventura. Most connected through Madrid Barajas Airport (MAD) with Iberia rather than flying nonstop. That made Fuerteventura only the sixth-largest unserved Spanish destination from Heathrow, behind Gran Canaria, which topped the list with 14,000 passengers.
The UK Civil Aviation Authority recorded 517,400 round-trip passengers between London and Fuerteventura in 2025. That figure excludes travellers who connected through other airports, so the true total is higher. Even so, Fuerteventura held just 14% of London-Canaries traffic, the smallest share among the so-called big four island destinations.
Tenerife South Airport (TFS) led that group with 1,495,000 passengers. Lanzarote followed with 889,100, and Gran Canaria carried 675,000. By mid-January 2027, London airports combined will offer 27 weekly departures to Fuerteventura across BA, easyJet, Jet2, Ryanair, and TUI Airways, unchanged from the same period in 2026.
Other carriers will keep serving Fuerteventura from London alongside BA’s new Heathrow flights:
- easyJet: daily from Gatwick, twice weekly from Luton
- Jet2: three weekly from Stansted, twice weekly from Gatwick, weekly from Luton
- Ryanair: eight weekly from Stansted
- TUI Airways: twice weekly from Gatwick
British Airways and Iberia Plan 183 Weekly Flights to Spain This Winter
By mid-January 2027, BA and its close partner Iberia will together operate 183 weekly flights from Heathrow to Spain, or 26 a day. BA accounts for 127 of those departures, with Iberia covering 56 under their metal-neutral partnership. That combined total is 10% higher than the same period in 2026, driven mostly by a 14% increase from BA itself.
Madrid remains the largest of the six Spanish routes from Heathrow, with 101 weekly departures split between BA and Iberia. Barcelona follows with 56 weekly flights, then Valencia with a daily service, Malaga with 13 weekly flights, Tenerife South with four weekly flights, and now Fuerteventura with two.
Thirteen of the weekly Madrid departures use widebody aircraft, largely to support freight connections toward South America. BA flies six of those weekly Madrid rotations with the Boeing 777-200ER and 787-8, while Iberia operates the route daily using the Airbus A330 and A350-900.
New Route Launches Alongside Wider British Airways Network Cuts
The Fuerteventura launch lands at the same time BA continues to trim other parts of its network. The airline has removed or shifted at least 19 airport pairs since early 2025, spanning long-haul, short-haul, and regional services, as capacity concentrates at Heathrow.
Separately, BA has dropped seven international long-haul routes over the past 18 months, including Gatwick links to Cape Town, Aruba, New York JFK, and Las Vegas. Heathrow lost its Jeddah and Kuwait services in the same period, the latter ending after more than 60 years of continuous operation.
One of those five Gatwick cuts is following a similar path to Fuerteventura. BA ended Gatwick flights to San José, Costa Rica in March 2026 after a decade of service. From October 2026, the airline will relaunch the route from Heathrow instead, running five times a week on the Boeing 787-8 and marking BA’s first Heathrow service into Central America.
The wider 19-route reduction also touched several short-haul and regional markets that will not return:
- Heathrow-Grenoble and Heathrow-Bilbao, both dropped within months of launch
- Izmir, Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen, Cologne, Riga, and Stuttgart, all cut from Heathrow
- London City-Prague, ended after operating since 2017
- Edinburgh-Olbia and London City-Frankfurt, both discontinued
Yet BA keeps testing new Heathrow markets even as it trims others. The airline also launched a five-week-only nonstop service between Heathrow and Orlando in July 2026, and it plans to move its Costa Rica route from Gatwick to Heathrow in October. Chief Planning and Strategy Officer Neil Chernoff said the winter 2026 changes represent “a significant investment in our long-haul leisure network, adding even more options and choice for our customers,” in a British Airways press release covering the season’s broader growth.
What The Fuerteventura Route Means for Travellers
For passengers, the new Heathrow flights mean a nonstop option to Fuerteventura without connecting through Madrid or transferring between London airports. Business travellers and those connecting onward through Heathrow’s wider network stand to benefit most, given the airport’s scale compared with Gatwick.
International visitors arriving in London on long-haul BA flights will also gain a same-airport connection to the Canary Islands for the first time. Previously, anyone wanting to reach Fuerteventura from a BA long-haul flight had to transfer across London to Gatwick, adding time and complexity to the journey.
Seat availability may still be limited given the modest twice-weekly frequency. Travellers hoping to fly BA’s new Heathrow-Fuerteventura route this winter should book early, particularly for peak December and January travel dates.
Fuerteventura’s tourism board has long promoted the island’s beaches and wind conditions to a British audience already familiar with Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, and Tenerife. A Heathrow option, even at just two flights a week, gives BA another point of entry into that established leisure market at its most premium London airport.