British Airways
 

The BA174 flight in January 2014 from JFK to LHR is a 777. Does anyone know if it's the 772 or 773? Cheers

It's equally likely to be either, assuming it's not a 747-400.

You'll find out on the day, or rather the day before if you can ascertain what aircraft operated the outbound BA177.

On one or two of the days I have looked at it is down as a -300.

Changing it to a -200 could cause one or two issues with capacity but as DR has pointed out nothing is definite - on the day it could get subbed for a 200 or a 744

Currently down as a B77W but the usual disclaimer of 'things can change' applies.

Best way to tell is the seat maps. If it has 48 Club World seats, its a -200. If it has 56 Club World seats, its a -300ER.

BA DUB
 

Sat Ba839 xxld.....60 pax left no flts no hotels in Dublin
Reason given was failure to agree fuel load ex Dub? Seems an unusual
One???
Today major delays again on BA , pity because they are advertising again,
Even sent 380 over on Sunday but dozens passengers moved to EI and others
Due to go down to five/six flts from 28oct, what's happening ?

Fleet
 

As the A380 begins long haul flying for BA, I was wondering what routes, beyond those already announced, do you see the A380 being used on in the years to come?

Also, do you think BA might eventually go down the same route as Lufthansa and add the B747-8 to their fleet too, as more B744's are retired?

Not a chance.

no-one understands why LH bought those dreadful old bangers anyway - maybe a mis-print in the contract...........

Hi I have noticed this too- punctuality to and from BHD is woeful also. 1420 to bhd regularly delayed. Last night's by almost 3 hours. Twice due to baggage in hold problems and a few techs as well. It's almost as if they take pleasure in it!!

Pretty ridiculous to suggest an airline would take pleasure in delays....it costs them money !

There were probs at Heathrow yesterday due to visibility early in the day and also baggage belt probs .

I fly LHR/BFS regularly and can,t remember when I last had any significant delay.

Pretty ridiculous to say that you haven't had any significant delay when Aer Lingus pulled out from this route last October. :rolleyes:

That rather depends on whether the OP was using

BFS (IATA airport code) = Belfast (Aldergrove/International)
or
BFS (IATA metropolitan code) = Belfast (all airports)

Given that the context was his flying regularly to Belfast, it's not hard to work out which he must have meant.

Looking at the stats for the last couple of months, they are pretty grim though - fewer than two-thirds of BA's Heathrow-Belfast flights were airborne within half-an-hour of the STD.

Surely though the key metric is arrival punctuality? Block times for departures from Heathrow to anywhere are usually padded to account for the inevitable delays queuing for take-off etc., so still being on the ground within 30 minutes of STD doesn't automatically imply a correspondingly late arrival.

No, of course not - the block time will, as you say, contain an allowance for taxy in/out and inbound holding delays.

In fact, having just done the same calculation for BA on Heathrow-Edinburgh, the Belfast stats don't actually look too bad on reflection - over the last 2 months, just over half the departures to EDI got airborne within the half-hour. Those that didn't include the 13:00 departure on Tuesday of this week which took off at 7pm. :O

Are BA not just interested in RTG time rather than actual std?

They publish two metrics in their Annual Report: RTG and 15-minute departure punctuality (55% and 79%, respectively, for last year).

I've never come across "Actual STD".

What's driving the poor punctuality then? Is it the lack of segregation of arriving and departing passengers from the ROI still clogging things up when the glass doors are shut or is it Menzies the handling agent in comparison with BA self handling at T5? Or is it the ongoing malarkey involved in bussing?

It appears to be a combination of all of the above as well as crew airframes and even baggage containers having to be moved from T5 across to T1.
Many flights to BHD and DUB have been delayed due crew rotation between terminals. A move for all routes to T5 may help improve performance.

Quote: "What's driving the poor punctuality then? Is it the lack of segregation of arriving and departing passengers from the ROI still clogging things up when the glass doors are shut or is it Menzies the handling agent in comparison with BA self handling at T5? Or is it the ongoing malarkey involved in bussing?"

All this nonsense isn't helping!


Quote: "It appears to be a combination of all of the above as well as crew airframes and even baggage containers having to be moved from T5 across to T1.
Many flights to BHD and DUB have been delayed due crew rotation between terminals. A move for all routes to T5 may help improve performance."

Good idea, but LHR-5, as big as it is, is apparently not big enough for all of BA (and IB). BA still have flights out of LHR-1 and LHR-3.

It was a lot easier when it was LHR-1 for shorthaul BA and LHR-4 for longhaul BA.

In reality the delays problem it's probably a combination of all these factors on LHR-BHD, especially if EI experiences similar delays on this route.


Quote: "Surely though the key metric is arrival punctuality? Block times for departures from Heathrow to anywhere are usually padded to account for the inevitable delays queuing for take-off etc., so still being on the ground within 30 minutes of STD doesn't automatically imply a correspondingly late arrival."

Indeed it is! However, flights to/from LHR have had extended block times for years. It's to account for the time spent queueing to takeoff and circling while waiting to land.

It bloody wasn't! Transfer between the two for connecting flights was a joke.