If you have ever tried to book a direct flight between Costa Rica and the United Kingdom in June, you already know the problem. The route has only existed in the European winter, which meant anyone travelling outside the high season connected through Madrid, Miami, Panama City or Atlanta and added most of a day to the trip.
That changes in October as British Airways confirmed today that it will keep its London–San José service running all year, with flights scheduled continuously through September 2027. The route also moves from London Gatwick to London Heathrow, the airline’s main base.
Frequencies split by season so between October 2026 and March 2027 the airline will fly five times a week, up from three. Between April and September 2027, when demand from Europe softens, the schedule drops back to three flights a week — but it no longer stops.
For the winter schedule, the flight leaves Heathrow at 11:10 a.m. and lands at Juan Santamaría International Airport at 4:40 p.m. The return departs San José at 6:40 p.m. and reaches Heathrow at 10:50 a.m. the following morning. The crossing takes roughly 11 hours in each direction.
British Airways will operate the year-round service with a Boeing 787-8 carrying 204 passengers — 31 seats in Club World business class, 37 in World Traveller Plus premium economy and 136 in World Traveller economy.
The airport change matters more than it sounds. Gatwick is a secondary base with limited long-haul connections, while Heathrow feeds more than 130 destinations British Airways serves directly. Someone flying in from Manchester, Edinburgh, Dublin, Frankfurt or Milan can now reach San José on a single ticket with one stop instead of hunting for a self-connection across London.
Heathrow also carries more freight. The Costa Rican Tourism Institute said the terminal switch will improve air cargo capacity between Costa Rica and Europe, which affects exporters shipping perishable goods on passenger aircraft.
Marcos V. Borges, executive president of the Costa Rican Tourism Institute, said the announcement represents a significant increase in seats and frequencies from London. Ricardo Hernández, executive director of AERIS, the company that operates Juan Santamaría, said the route’s year-round permanence resulted from joint work between the airport operator, the tourism institute and the airline. Tourism Minister William Rodríguez said earlier this year that negotiations with British Airways ran for roughly two years.
The United Kingdom is the third-largest European source market for visitors to Costa Rica, according to tourism institute figures. The institute reported 15,741 British arrivals by air during the first two months of 2026, and 319,552 arrivals from Europe overall, an increase of 8.8 percent over the same period a year earlier.
The timing is deliberate as the World Travel Market, one of the largest international tourism trade fairs, opens in London in November, and Costa Rica arrives with a confirmed year-round connection rather than a seasonal one. The tourism institute (ICT) has also been running its first pan-European marketing campaign, built around the tagline “live.life.now.”
Costa Rica is not the only beneficiary of a wider British Airways expansion announced the same day. The airline plans to increase Latin American capacity by 25 percent for the northern summer of 2027, moving London–Buenos Aires to a daily operation with an onward leg to Santiago, and taking Rio de Janeiro to daily service as well.
Fares for the new Heathrow flights are already on sale through the airline’s booking system. Travellers holding reservations on the Gatwick service for dates after the switchover should expect to be reaccommodated on the Heathrow departure, and anyone with tight onward connections at Gatwick will need to rebuild that leg.
What Costa Rica gains is a link that no longer disappears for half the year — steadier seat supply, a European hub with real onward reach, and cargo space on a wide-body aircraft twelve months out of twelve.
