On Thursday July 3rd Avianca began the operation of its new direct non-stop Bogotá-London-Bogotá service. Flight AV120 took off at 10:19 pm (local time) from Eldorado International Airport in the Colombian capital with 227 passengers and 13 crew. AV120 was operated by an Airbus A330 aircraft, touching down at Heathrow Terminal 2 today at 8:21 am (GMT).

With the launch of this route Avianca advances in its consolidation process as the leading airline in the Colombia-Europe market with four weekly flights to London being added to the current offering of 23 Colombia-Spain flights.

The flight will operate on Monday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday from Eldorado International Airport in Bogotá and on Tuesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday from the new Heathrow Airport Terminal 2 in London. In this way Avianca offers new options to travellers from Latin America interested in flying to destinations in northern Europe. It also expands the options for British travellers who want to fly to Bogotá and to seamlessly connect, via Avianca, to the other capitals throughout Latin America and Caribbean.

The London-Bogotá flight is scheduled to take off in the British capital at 10:35 am (London time) with 231 passengers and 13 crew on board.

According to Avianca’s Vice President of Client Experience, Rodrigo Llaguno, responsible for welcoming the passengers of the first flight on the Bogotá-London route: “This transatlantic flight is an opportunity for business travellers and tourists to get to know Avianca’s quality service. It’s a challenge we’ve been preparing for and we’ve provided new resources throughout the complete customer service cycle. We hope that travellers enjoy every single detail of our service as much as we’ve enjoyed implementing the required operational and service tasks.”

The recently opened Terminal 2, assigned to the flight service AV120 at Heathrow, boasts an area of 185,000m2 from where the 23 member airlines of Star Alliance operate 121 daily flights to 45 destinations in 25 countries.

No transit visa
As has already been announced the British government confirmed that Colombians will no longer need visas for flights in transit in the UK.

Visas will still be required for travellers who for whatever reason need to go through the UK border control or if their connecting flight is in a different airport from where they arrived. For more information please visit the UK visa website: www.gov.uk/check-uk-visa