British Airways looked at whether to go ahead with its heavily promoted London-to-New York business class-only service at least twice after announcing it last year.

Speaking at City airport before boarding the service’s maiden flight, Willie Walsh, chief executive, said BA had reviewed it “on at least two occasions” after announcing it in February last year, before the worst of the global downturn saw premium travel collapse.

The last review was only completed three months ago in June, the same month that tickets went on sale, and the airline gave the final go-ahead.

“We’ve gone into this with our eyes open,” said Mr Walsh. “This is our core business.”

Mr Walsh said he believed the new service from London City airport would be profitable within a year given the interest among corporate customers, especially in nearby Canary Wharf.

The 32-seat flights are more expensive than equivalent Heathrow flights and some industry observers are sceptical given past failures of Silverjet, Maxjet and Eos, which also launched and then ditched a business-only transatlantic service.

BA’s service is also slower than its Heathrow rivals as the aircraft have to refuel at Ireland’s Shannon airport barely an hour after leaving City – where the runway is too short to permit a full-tank take-off.

The cheapest return fare is just under £2,000 and a fully flexible fare will cost more than £5,300.

The first flight was not without hitches: as well as being the first long-haul flight from London City, the BA flight – which has the BA0001 flight number formerly used by Concorde – is also supposed to be the first between the UK and US offering e-mail, text and internet services.

However, as some passengers discovered, a reliable connection was not always available for all services.

Benoit Debains, chief executive of OnAir, the inflight communications provider operating the service, said this was due to “transitional issues”, such as some phone companies not offering GPRS connections.

He expected the situation to correct itself as the companies adapted to increased demand from passengers.