{"id":292359,"date":"2025-07-26T04:19:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T04:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/292359\/"},"modified":"2025-07-26T04:19:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T04:19:10","slug":"richmond-airport-leaders-considering-adding-a-nonstop-flight-to-heathrow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/292359\/","title":{"rendered":"Richmond airport leaders considering adding a nonstop flight to Heathrow"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Sarah Chakales<\/a><\/p>\n

RICHMOND, Va. (WWBT) – A direct flight from Richmond to London could become a reality.<\/p>\n

The Capital Region Airport Commission, a group of local business and elected leaders, as well as airport executives, is considering this idea.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we know in the community, there\u2019s a ton of interest for travel, nonstop flights from Richmond to Europe, I mean, directly over the Atlantic,\u201d Richmond International Airport (RIC) Director of Marketing & Air Service Development Troy Bell said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd what makes it more possible than ever before is there\u2019s aircraft that are a little bit smaller that can actually make that trip,\u201d Bell added. \u201cSo everybody\u2019s like, let\u2019s find a way. London, for us in terms of Europe, is the number one destination.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bell said half a million Central Virginians fly to Europe yearly, but most are choosing other airports with nonstop options.<\/p>\n

Having a direct international flight from RIC to London Heathrow Airport (LHR) also opens up more options for European companies doing business in the Richmond area.<\/p>\n

Lego, for example, is headquartered in Denmark, but building a manufacturing plant in Chesterfield<\/a> and a regional distribution center in Prince George<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Greater Richmond Partnership has been digging into the numbers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are over 230 internationally-operated facilities in the Richmond region, and most of those are from Europe,\u201d Greater Richmond Partnership Vice President of Marketing and Communications Michael Ivey said. \u201cSo when you think about all the international companies that are doing business here, a flight to Europe just makes a lot of sense for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

When it comes to attracting new companies to the area, a recent perception survey compiled by a third-party consultant for the Greater Richmond Partnership showed 67% of corporate leaders and 77% of site location consultants would find Richmond as a more appealing place to put down roots if there were more direct flights, both domestically and internationally.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that\u2019s what the Greater Richmond Partnership, that\u2019s our mission, is to attract more businesses to the region,\u201d Ivey added.<\/p>\n

Bell said RIC is prepared.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can handle crowds coming through the terminal building. We have runways that handle larger aircraft than we\u2019ll need in the foreseeable future to do this type of service. We have available gates. We have [a] federal inspection station, the customs part, it\u2019s already here,\u201d Bell said. \u201cSo we\u2019ve got a lot of the pieces and the rest of it is just kind of bridging that confidence gap.\u201d<\/p>\n

By confidence, he means appealing to airlines as a profitable option.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so you mitigate the risk, you reduce the risk to an airline so that [if] they offer that service, they know they\u2019re going to at least break even or make profit,\u201d Bell said. \u201cIdeally, that\u2019s normally done with something that\u2019s called a minimum revenue guarantee. In other words, if it costs you a million dollars to operate this month, but you only take in $800,000 revenue, we\u2019ll cover that gap.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Bell clarified it would not be the airport covering the gap.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe FAA does not allow us to do that. The airport can do things. We can help with marketing. We can waive some of the fees around the airport for a short period of time, but typically, the funding for that, for risk mitigation, comes from [the] local community, local businesses,\u201d Bell said. \u201cAnd increasingly, we\u2019re seeing coast to coast, from states in some cases, weighing in with millions of dollars spent over a multi-year period to land a single route.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bell said the next steps are to survey the community to gauge interest and reach out to state leaders, Governor Glenn Youngkin and the General Assembly, for instance, to determine what sort of funding might be possible.<\/p>\n

Ivey thinks there is a strong argument for local leaders and businesses to support the initiative.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it comes to global competitiveness, international flights and just direct flights in general will really help the Greater Richmond Region,\u201d Ivey said.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 WWBT. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Sarah Chakales RICHMOND, Va. (WWBT) – A direct flight from Richmond to London could become a reality.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[52400,748,10959,5554,393,299,12967,4884,64716,257,108753,26460,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-292359","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-airport","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-businesses","11":"tag-community","12":"tag-england","13":"tag-europe","14":"tag-flight","15":"tag-great-britain","16":"tag-heathrow","17":"tag-london","18":"tag-nonstop","19":"tag-richmond","20":"tag-uk","21":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114917616109920524","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}