As BA Closes Gatwick-Paris, Eurostar to offer Ashford Lifeline

• BA move means no direct flights from Gatwick to Paris by any airline
• End of an era after 20 years of flights to Paris
• Eurostar launch campaign to target 100,000 Gatwick-Paris customers

Eurostar, the high-speed passenger train service that links the UK with France and Belgium, is expecting to carry thousands more passengers from Ashford International to Paris after the closure this Sunday of BA’s Gatwick-Paris service.

BA has five flights a day to and from Paris but after Sunday the service will be terminated. Now, travellers will be able to travel seamlessly between the centre of Ashford and the centre of Paris in under two hours via Eurostar.

Eurostar has seven trains a day in each direction between Ashford International and Paris with each train having the capacity of six Boeing 737s. Furthermore, a customer that previously relied on the Gatwick-Paris service could see their door-to-door journey time cut by over 25 per cent (see case study example).

To mark BA’s last Paris flight from Gatwick, Eurostar has developed an advertising campaign featuring “Mr.Jetset” - the ill-informed passenger who insists on travelling to Paris by plane as a declaration of status despite the disjointed and time consuming nature of flying.

Paul Charles, Director of Communications, Eurostar, said: “People now have a better option to get to Paris - by high-speed rail. They know that journey times are swift and much more seamless than going by plane.

“By taking Eurostar from Ashford, passengers also cut 50 minutes off their journey time to Paris and yet with flexible ticketing people can return to central London at no extra cost.”

The new route to Paris:

Case study: Travelling to Paris from Tunbridge Wells

BA from Gatwick
Tunbridge - Gatwick: 30 mins approx by car
Airport check in: 2 hours
Flight time: 1.10mins direct
CDG to central Paris: 40 mins approx
Total: 4.20 hours

Eurostar from Ashford
Tunbridge - Ashford: 30 mins approx by car
Check-in 30 mins
Ashford - Paris: 2 hours
Total : 3 hours