British Airways: risk of turbulence on Willie Walsh’s flight path

[Seat62K]

Employees per aircraft is an astonishingly crude measure of productivity. Revenue passenger kms, capacity passenger kms and revenue per employee are a bit better but even here significant but imaginary productivity increases can be engineered simply by outsourcing.
P.S. The 2008 BA shareholders' magazine, Overview, uses available tonne kms per MPE and this, too, is pretty meaningless, in my view, particularly as the magazine also reports a 2% gain in productivity compared with a year ago!

[HZ123]

Capacity will reduce by 6.4 per cent against the original plan. The majority of the winter capacity reductions are to the airline’s shorthaul network — including the suspension of four destinations from Gatwick — while the number of flights to some longhaul routes will also be reduced.

The four Gatwick shorthaul services to be suspended from October 26 are: Poznan, Sarajevo, Dresden and Newquay. New Gatwick routes to Valencia and Porto, which were planned to launch in October, will no longer start. Services to Hyderabad have been delayed until December 6.


The upside is IB come as a BOGOF You get Lan Chile what a winning combination.

It appears to me that AF & KLM need a huge amount of workk to unite & and display fiscal benefits?

[Tea Coffee Or Me]

I didn't see any details of all the BA 744's which were going to be sent to the desert or parked up at LHR on rotation, as mentioned by previous correspondents.

With up to 50 carriers in western democracies predicted to go bust as stated in todays Times (2/8/08), ETIHAD, EMIRATES and QATAR Airlines have all placed record orders for new aircraft. There seems to be no question of these airlines going out of business.

It's about time the 'West' put up its prices to Gulf states for goods and services. Two can play at that game.

[747-436]

I didn't see any details of all the BA 744's which were going to be sent to the desert or parked up at LHR on rotation, as mentioned by previous correspondents.

The parking of loads of aircraft was only ever speculation.

[CHINOOKER]

The decision on the 747s being parked up/rotated is due shortly....All depends on several criteria..."life remaining" on each a/c to it's next heavy maintenance check and the particular configurations that operations/marketing want to keep!! Early indications are that 4x 747s with a "low J" config are the ones in the frame to go.......Rumour has it they may be parked up in El Paso??,as a lot of the US desert sites are almost full......Will post a/c in frame on here when known.

[Tea Coffee Or Me]

So far the only reductions announced for L/H ex LHR is one JFK service and one of the two NRT dailies.

[Da Dog]

At a recent flight ops forum, it was explained that JFK down to 7 from 8, NRT down to 1 from 2 and 1 of the 3 LAX is to be reduced for 12 weeks of the winter period. That and the movement of some flying away from the 747 to the 777 will free up 3-4 747 hulls, which would be replaced by 4 777-200 being delivered in 2009.

He went on to confirm broadly what CHINOOKER has said.

[Skipness One Echo]

JAL dropped their second daily NRT-LHR service a while back too. Seems odd that London-JFK is actually static as they are adding a Gatwick service whilst cancelling a Heathrow one. Left hand right hand?

[Tea Coffee Or Me]

What is the point of dropping one flight from LHR and starting another at LGW? BA couldn't make money before on the LGW/JFK route even with 767's.

LCY/LHR is going to be operated by SFG crews. Perhaps there is a connection?

[Railgun]

Might they do a back to back thats not a back to back as the man-jfk was? LGW-JFK-LCY-JFK-LGW as there is 2 lcy rotations per day and only one lgw one? Crew splits in JFK, one doing one lcy the other doing the other one? Dont know the timings though or how many crew each will fly with.

[Skipness One Echo]

Who are SFG? Thought it was mainline BA with the "Speedbird" callsign. LCY is on an A318 and LGW on a B777 so can't be the same flight deck crew (!)

[PC767]

There, as far as I am aware, no low J B747s left at BA. They have been recently converted to the mid J spec. So I guess that a couple of mid J spec a/c may be parked if they happen to be among the older a/c despite the fact they have just under gone a refit.

I did hear though that no a/c were going to the dessert. The surplus a/c would remain at LHR and would alternate in rotation.

All rumours though.

[Glamgirl]

For clarification,

SFG = Single Fleet Gatwick. We operate both short and long haul from LGW. We are still mainline though, it's just the name of the fleet. There is a gap in the market for LGW-JFK and therefore we're starting that route. It's pretty much fully booked already - in all cabins (4 class).

We will also operate the LCY-NYC route on the A318 (most likely JFK), via Shannon on the way over (refuel and immigration). This route will start next year. I doubt very much that we'll do it as a "back-to-back", as the 777 LGW-JFK has 11 cabin crew and the 318 LCY-NYC will have 3 (before you panic, it will only have 32 seats). The reason why we will operate the LCY-NYC route is that we already have an agreement in place to do both short and long haul. We're more economical in the wages department as well.

I'm really looking forward to doing those flights, I've already put my name on the list for the first one! (Not really, as there isn't a list, but I've asked my manager if I can pretty please do it).

This winter will be tough, but the sun will shine again come spring time. Big things happening back stage and big plans for next year (not just my promotion ).

Gg