British Airways

[01475]

Qatar still have spare planes?

[PAXboy]

Mr Mac. Yes, BA have had a near monopoly of this route for decades. They have stayed with it and benefitted from that. Of the a/c that you saw, the 747s are going to LHR and the 777 to LGW. This was a secondary route that they started when someone else tried and then stopped. CPT is mainly holiday traffic and is one of the most sought after destinations for Avios reward seats. Mostly be retired people who can plan where they are going tobe in a years time - going to see the grandchildren!

Incidentally, JNB is the same, you will often see a 747 and a 380 going to LHR within two hours of each other. The 'daylight return' where the a/c turns and goes back in the usual timeframe have proved unpopular as the biz folks want the day for work and the leisure folks want the day for leisure! So the a/c sit for 12 hours and this helps to keep the cost up. Most other European carriers do the same, although some have a daylight return and, if you get the chance to see the Sahara from the air - it is well worth it.

[KelvinD]

I would say the BA fleet is overstretched, at least at Heathrow, as they are using Iberia aircraft for some of their flights.

[AirportPlanner1]

Surely BA don't need to suddenly find ten aircraft or whatever and flood the market with new routes, they just get Vueling/Iberia Express/Aer Lingus etc to do some slot sitters to DUB, BCN etc for a summer or two while the longer-term plan is implemented.

[pax britanica]

I poated on another thread but I did an out and back to Athens late Sunday returning yesterday evening and it rahtr summed up BA2017 to me.

Outbound completley full 320 newish with new Euro interior. terrible seat picth for Club 31 inches and seats fine for LHR-Berlin or Barcelona but not for Athens . Aicrafy was very clean and food looked OK-I didnt have anyhting. cabin crew very busy not much in the way of interaction with PAX. Return on ancient 76 , loads of room big old comfy seats , big galley , crew have time to organsise emals ervice and handle ti extremelywell lots of pleasnat chat with Pax and avery nice emal -

Club outbound worth it only for the lounge and quick borsing , Club inbound a vastly more premium experience . I have to say that narrow bodies are not for me over 3 hours -I am sure an all J 318/9 would be fine bit not one that's been 'densified'

So at times BA can offer a really premium product, last nights trip was very very nice one loads of space for my co,,eague and i to do some work relax after a hectic day-a genuine premium experience . Outbound -Easyjet with leather seats .

I chatted to a very senior BA FA who was a real poster girl for BA who said she wondered what the trip would be like a year from now with a 'NEO' as she and the in charge refered to the new dense 321s that will operate to eastern med next year. The flights were very full and BA might point to that and say it shows people are fine with the new Euro product but I do not see that it will offer anything remotely special or premium when the 767s go and I cannot believe that the downgrading of service won't turn out to be another Cruz error.

[vectisman]

Airport Planner-1
BA is the stronger brand in London. The plan is not to dilute it. Vueling may well expand at places like Luton. Manchester, Birmingham etc... IAG confirmed today that most of the Gatwick slots are for BA. They will not need to scramble for new short haul aircraft. There are deliveries next year. Other aircraft can be retained longer. There are also 30 or so ex Monarch airframes looking for new homes.

[WHBM]

Originally Posted by Mr Mac

Quick question to the Forum re BA utilization of a/c. Currently I am in Cape Town airport awaiting to start trip home, and there are 2 747 and a 777 a/c here from BA all presumably awaiting evening returns to UK. I cannot believe it can be economic to have this amount of metal sat here for hours each day. I am bound home via DXB as have meeting there (and nolonger fly BA anyway) but is there enough traffic ex UK for this amount of a/c ?

This one comes up from time to time, it is economic, and you may have noticed that BA are making substantially more profit than the carrier based in DXB, so possibly they understand something.

The issue is the same elsewhere in the world with north-south long haul flights of about 9-12 hours in the same time zone, such as USA to Argentina/Chile. Running a daylight flight on such routes just does not pick up the business, especially premium. It becomes difficult or impossible to have any onward connections, either air or surface, at either end of the route, and you become restricted to just the local O&D market, which just doesn't cut it compared to the overnights.

Regarding cost, a very significant proportion of an aircraft operating cost is flying hours based, crew, maintenance, fuel, even a proportion of the airframe depreciation. The net impact of having an aircraft standing for some hours is nothing like you might imagine, and more than offset by the commercial advantage.

If you did do a CPT-LHR daylight flight, then for it to leave after an adequate turnround from the southbound overnight, by the time it got to LHR it would be too late to do another long haul turnround to leave LHR that evening, so it would be on the ground until the next morning anyway. So what's the point ?

I have taken the daylight flight JFK to LHR. Depart at 1000 means being in JFK shortly after 0830 so depart Manhattan at 0730. An early start therefore. LHR arrival at 2130, bags etc and out by 2230, in Central London after 2300. That's unreliable for even trains to the outer suburbs. You end up getting to bed after midnight and are expected back in your Central London office, 5 hours out of your time zone, for 0900 "because you didn't take the red eye". No wonder it's the lightest load of the day on JFK-LHR. And no wonder I feel zonked.

[BAladdy]

Originally Posted by KelvinD

I would say the BA fleet is overstretched, at least at Heathrow, as they are using Iberia aircraft for some of their flights.

What flights are you talking about?. IB have not operated a flight that is meant to be operated by BA metal for a while.

Are you talking about the flights operating to MAD from T5 with flight number range BA510-BA528?. If you are then these flights are actually IB operated flights.

[DaveReidUK]

They are indeed.

Out of interest, why are they given flight numbers in the range normally used for BA-operated flights and not in the usual codeshare flight number range ?

And why only LHR-MAD flights, while none of the MAD-LHR ones operated by IB have pukka BA flight numbers ?

[The96er]

I believe this is due to the handling arrangements in T5 by BA themselves which necessitates using the BA FLY system. So the flights are treated as if they're on BA's own metal.

[BAladdy]

That’s correct. The flights in question operate into LHR using there four digit IB mainline flight numbers.

The only time that BA have leased a IB aircraft and its crew to operate a BA flight was during S16 season. This was a A320 aircraft and it was used to operate two round trips a day to MAD from LHR. These flights were offered the usual CE & ET products.

Customers on the BA510-BA528 receive the standard IB shorthaul product.

[Porky Speedpig]

BA will also need crews pretty quickly too, not just aircraft, that would add weight to the likelihood of wet lease in the short term. Maybe the purple squadron will return?

[AvGeek1]

New Route

London (Heathrow) to Kefalonia from May 2018

[Peter47]

WHBM

The 744s must be fully depreciated so there is virtually no capital cost. This is not true of the 380s two of which spend all day in JNB - but as mentioned elsewhere a little extra yield will make up for higher capital costs. A departure from CPT at 07:30 would arrive at LHR at about 19:20 so would be in time to form another flight. I believe that BA did this many years ago, presumably the stopped this for a reason.

I'm not sure that BA aircraft are utilised particularly heavily. Have a look at Swiss International - there does not seem to be much slack in their schedules at all. Or Air Canada (and I suspect many other airlines) during the summer holidays. Looking at FR24 Edelweiss has four long haul aircraft which fly for six days in the week with less than two hours between most sectors, although they do rest on the seventh day. One advantage of long layovers is being able to catch up time - as long as you have rested crews waiting.

I have to say that when flying back from HKG or the far east I always try and take the day flight. There is nothing worse than arriving at 05:30 after a 13 hour flight. Arriving at 10:00 after a 7 hour eastbound flight is bearable. I should say that I regretably generally fly economy these days.

[FFHKG]

It's a great pity that BA dropped the morning departure they offered some years ago from HKG. CX seem to do well with their day-time HKG departures to LHR so I cannot understand why BA could not make it work.

[wiggy]

A departure from CPT at 07:30 would arrive at LHR at about 19:20 so would be in time to form another flight.

From aircraft rotation POV where to? Typical longhaul turn is around 2 hours and you can’t chuck a 380 onto any old route .... at the moment the last BA 380 leaves at just after 9 PM....(JNB do you want to delay that ...what are the implications for that service if the inbound CPT is delayed). The later departures at present the likes of ABV, BOM and the Middle East.

From a pax POV a late arrival into LHR might be ok for the Brits but it still leaves the thorny issue of connecting pax.

[rog747]

virgin does have a/c arrive into LHR in the evening then turn them round for late departures and yes it does go all horribly wrong

[Flightrider]

BA flew a daylight CPT a few winters ago and it was a commercial disaster. They have never done it again since apart from occasional ad hoc flights and disruption recovery.

[PAXboy]

CPT + JNB have been cash cows for years, even in the apartheid years.

[WHBM]

Originally Posted by Peter47

A departure from CPT at 07:30 would arrive at LHR at about 19:20 so would be in time to form another flight....There is nothing worse than arriving at 05:30 after a 13 hour flight.

I'm a bit lost here. For an 0730 departure from Cape Town, the inbound would need to arrive at 0530. This appears to be before the airport terminal opens. Turning round such a long haul flight, particularly with the freight volumes you get on this sector, in less than 2 hours is not practical. And then arriving back at Heathrow it's another tight turnround after an all-day flight to get away before the Heathrow night restriction sets in. For 1920 arrivals, it's common to find the holding stacks are pretty full.

But does the point about nothing being worse than an 0530 arrival invalidate this ?

The departing passengers at Cape Town would look to be arriving at the airport at about 0600, which is probably before local public transport starts, would require leaving hotels before breakfast is served, and certainly impractical for anyone coming from beyond the immediate vicinity. It works for domestic flights, where people can handle this, but not for a major intercontinental flight.