The BA charter programme was still going stong up until the day the fleet was grounded. They may not have been taking any more bookings for aircraft but were going ahead with the current bookings well into 2001. After this they planned to scale them back to protect airframe life, but not stop them as they are a very good revenue stream. The "round the bays" only used half an aircraft reference flight.
BA could have taken the risk with charters over the past year but did not want to do this and face letting people down....or worst not have a standby for the BA001!
The issue was they they only had 5 aircraft and needed 6 to do charters along with the BA003/4, at certain times they had only 3 aircraft servicable. eg 1 in 3 month check and 1 in a week long service check. If another went tech they were in trouble, hence the BA002 re-timings we seen.
This year there was big gap in the 3 monnth check requirements (as they only had 5 aircraft not 7) ,so charters would have been very possible.
Over the past 2 weeks I have seen BA flying all 4 servicable aircraft (C,D,E,G) regulary, so should be flying charters NOW!!!! and making some more money to off-set the £84M write of costs
During the day 3 aircraft are kicking about LHR doing nothing ahead of the BA001 departure at 18:30
They could easily be flying "round the bay" trips from the 10:30 slot, and then if the aircraft behaves during the short flight, it has been given a run out ahead of the evening's BA001, either as the main or standby.
Come on BA, you know what the public and your shareholder want. I hope they do not simply wait utill October to do just a few token flights around the UK
