The new breed of business class-only airlines operating between London and New York is helping Cunard Line replace business lost when Concorde was grounded in 2003.
In the year since Eos started flying Boeing 757s with just 48 flat-bed seats from Stansted to JFK, round-trip transatlantic packages with one leg on the Queen Mary 2 – developed with agency partners such as Voyana – have proved to be hugely popular.
Cunard Line has also agreed a commercial partnership with Silverjet that is due to start flying between Luton and Newark on January 25.
Cunard Line president Carol Marlow said: “The balcony and grill suites on QM2 are an upper-class product so these kinds of business-class jets are great to partner. We used to do a lot of Concorde business and this is capturing that higher class of traveller.”
The number of UK Cunard passengers will overtake those from the US this year, Marlow said, with the Queen Elizabeth 2 proving more popular than ever with it’s 25th world cruise all but sold out.
“As long as we can keep QE2 maintained and looking great we will keep it going while there’s demand,” she said.