Ambient Airlines is a long-haul boutique airline headquartered at Ambient House in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, United Kingdom. The airline operates from a single hub at London Heathrow Airport (LHR), in the London Borough of Hillingdon.
Ambient is noted for the quality and ambience of its aircraft interiors, as well as for its excellent inflight meals and amenities, which together regularly places it among the world’s best airlines. The carrier’s long-range, intercontinental route network connects London-LHR to 24 destinations in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania.
Ambient operates an all wide-body fleet comprised of Boeing 777-300ER and Boeing 787-9 aircraft that offer passengers a 4 class configuration:
Economy;
Premier (premium economy);
Ambient Select (business); and
Ambient Sterling, a set of 2 to 4 private suites characterized by floor-to-ceiling doors, a 2 m / 79 inch fully flat bed, a minibar, private storage, and other assorted luxuries.
History
Ambient Airlines was founded in 1982 by Peter Armitage (now Sir Peter Armitage) a British business magnate and gentleman adventurer whose business conglomerate, Ambient Group, oversees a very extensive array of subsidiary enterprises with interests in the communications, hospitality, media, technology, and transport sectors. Sir Peter, always an aviation enthusiast, first entered the airline business after having an exceptionally bad airline experience with his newlywed wife trying to fly to their honeymoon retreat in the Bahamas.
Establishing its original head office near the Portobello Road Market in Notting Hill, London, the airline set up shop at London-LHR with single Boeing 747-200 acquired from Berringer Airways, a long-haul, “no frills” low cost carrier entering bankruptcy during to the Early 1980s Recession. Ambient began using the 747 on the highly competitive London-Heathrow-New York-JFK route in the summer of 1983, and managed to turn a profit in only a few months.
Next, Mr Armitage bought a pair of additional 747-200s and started additional routes to Miami-MIA and Los Angeles-LAX from its Heathrow base. From there, Ambient gradually widening its offerings across the Atlantic to the USA, as well as opening service to Hong Kong-HKG. By the early 1990s the airline had expanded services further to include Trinidad-POS, Tokyo-NRT and Bangkok-BKK.
Between 1995 and 2000, Ambient Airlines started replacing their 747-200s with more efficient and higher capacity Boeing 747-400s, while also introducing two other aircraft types, namely the Boeing 777 and Airbus A340. Toronto-YYZ and Montreal-YUL came online in 1996, and Vancouver-YVR and Mumbai-BOM were added in 1999 and 2000, respectively.
Mr Armitage was knighted in 2004 by Charles, Prince of Wales, thereby becoming Sir Peter Armitage. During the same year the carrier began direct service to Australia, using its Airbus A340-500s to connect London-LHR with Sydney-SYD via Singapore-SIN, and Melbourne-MEL via Male-MLE. In 2007 the airline dropped Melbourne-MEL and replaced it with Auckland-AKL to create a new LHR-MLE-AKL route, and added new service to Dubai-DXB. Ambient acquired a pair of Airbus A380s in 2008, which were placed on the LHR-JFK and LHR-LAX routes. They added a 3rd A380 to the fleet in 2010 to fly LHR-SIN-SYD.
In 2013 Ambient Airlines introduced the Boeing 747-8i and Boeing 787-9 to their fleet, and began flying to Cancún-CUN, Shanghai-PVG, and Johannesburg-JNB. In 2014 the airline continued a healthy network expansion, adding on service to Zanzibar-ZNZ, Karachi-KHI, Nairobi-NBO, Barbados-BGI, and Rio de Janeiro-GIG. The airline also retired the last of its 747-400s that year, replacing them on most routes with 777s and A340s.
For Ambient Airlines, the Covid-19 Pandemic in 2020 was particularly devastating, forcing the company to retire all of its A380s and send most of its fleet into storage, resulting in widespread layoffs that nearly scuttled the airline. As an additional cost-cutting measure, Sir Peter closed the old Ambient Airlines head office in Notting Hill and moved its headquarters over to the Ambient House in Kensington, where it joined several of his other companies there.
Within a few months, however, Sir Peter Armitage managed to turn things around by pulling all of his remaining stored aircraft and having them converted into freighters, then wet-leasing them out to cargo airlines in Britain and the US. This move proved very profitable and sustained the carrier until business began to improve in 2022-2023. By late 2023, Ambient sold off the freighters, including all of its A340s and 747-8is, thus becoming an all Boeing fleet consisting of 777-300s and 787-9s.
2019 Aria S242 Supersonic SST Order
Historically speaking, when it came to matters of fleet management, Sir Peter and Ambient Airlines tended to be rather conservative, preferring to replace aircraft types only whenever necessity required it. However, during the 2019 Paris Air Show, Sir Peter surprised nearly everyone in the airline industry by becoming the 2nd airline to place an order for the new Aria S242 Supersonic - a groundbreaking, long-range SST (supersonic transport) airliner capable of flying up to 9000 nmi / 16668 at cruise speeds up to Mach 2.5 / 1666 knots / 3085 km. His order prompted 7 other carriers to follow suit, ensuring the S242’s success. In the midst of the Covid-19 Pandemic, Sir Peter Armitage considered canceling the order, but ultimately left it unchanged. As a result of his restraint, Ambient will take delivery of their first S242 in late 2024, becoming the first European carrier to do so.
Destinations
Ambient Airlines currently offers nonstop or one-stop direct service from London-LHR to the following cities worldwide.
Auckland-AKL, New Zealand
Cancún-CUN, Mexico
Chicago-ORD, Illinois USA
Dallas/Ft Worth-DFW, Texas USA
Dubai-DXB, United Arab Emirates
Hong Kong-HKG
Johannesburg-JNB, South Africa
Karachi-KHI, Pakistan
Las Vegas-LAS, Nevada USA
London-LHR, UK - Hub
Los Angeles-LAX, California USA
Male-MLE, Maldives
Miami-MIA, Florida USA
Mumbai-BOM, India
Nairobi-NBO, Kenya
New York-JFK, New York USA
Port of Spain-POS, Trinidad and Tobago
San Francisco-SFO, California USA
Shanghai-PVG, China
Singapore-SIN
Sydney-SYD, Australia
Tokyo-NRT, Japan
Toronto-YYZ, Ontario Canada
Vancouver-YVR, British Columbia Canada
Washington-IAD, DC USA
Zanzibar-ZNZ, Tanzania
Fleet
Current Fleet
The current Ambient Airlines fleet utilizes two large capacity, long range aircraft types.
Future Fleet
Ambient Airlines is awaiting delivery of 5 Aria AS242 Supersonic aircraft, with options to order 10 more. Delivery of these aircraft are expected to begin in the latter half of 2024.
Former Fleet
Ambient Airlines formerly operated the following aircraft types.
Airbus A340 - 1994-2022
Airbus A380 - 2008-2020
Boeing 747-200 - 1984-2005
Boeing 747-400 - 1994-2014
Boeing 747-8i - 2013-2022
= Nota Bene =
Ambient Airlines was kinda-sorta inspired by Virgin Atlantic Airlines, but not entirely.
Peter Armitage isn’t Sir Richard Branson, but if they were to run into each other at some fashionable event in London or New York, I have no doubt they’d get along famously.
The Aria S242 Supersonic jet has a reverse color scheme, being white with red markings. This was done not so much for artistic reasons as for technical reasons: Darker colors - especially on the top of the aircraft - tends to interfere with heat radiation when an aircraft flies at supersonic speeds, and after about 20 minutes the fuselage would heat up to beyond its safety limits. The paint itself would also likely melt off and/or become combustible. So liveries on supersonic jets tend to use cheatlines and trims rather than all over paintjobs.
This is why NASA’s new Lockheed Martin X-59 experimental supersonic jet received a patriotic paint scheme that was mostly painted white with red accents on top, but is very blue underneath. (The tail can tolerate color paints better, btw, if certain heat-resistant paints are used.) This is also why the Pepsi-themed Concorde only wore that livery for two weeks.I’ve had a couple of people mention that the Ambient Airlines “spilled paint livery” reminded them more of bloodshed than paint. I am no fan of bloodshed or affiliated mayhem, to be sure, so I was taken aback by this assertion. I’m thinking about revisiting the “spilled paint” livery at some point soon to try and make it more artsy and less bloodshed-y looking. Changing the color from red to some other color would be the quickest fix I suppose, but I’m going to explore all options before doing anything.
All liveries depicted in this article were conceived and drawn by the Author.
Aria aircraft templates displayed in this article are fictional aircraft, whose original templates were drawn by the Author. These templates are not currently available for public purchase, but may be made available at a later date.
All other aircraft templates shown in this article are licensed from Norebbo and augmented by the Author for display. Blank side view templates of these aircraft are available for purchase through ShopNorebbo.
Route Maps were created using Great Circle Map.