Just had the message through tonight, funny how BA always delivers bad news late at night to us all in the company or on a Friday evening

Feel incredibly sad but not surprised , we new this was coming , but what an end to an iconic aircraft

My last operating flight was back in March from New York to Heathrow just before it all kicked off

An amazing aircraft, bit like a London bus I would tell customers, falling to bits but kept going !!

and the CEO A321's likely wont resurface either.

That's a sad parting, but quite inevitable given the incredibly slow recovery of customer demand from the pandemic. The analysis of long-haul booking trends by IATA this week makes for incredibly depressing reading.

At the perilous risk of levity in a situation where today's jobs and livelihoods are clearly and sadly at stake, BA have clearly chosen to forget about 1970 when the first 747-136s were delivered to BOAC. The aircraft were grounded for nearly a year under a BALPA industrial dispute before they actually entered service in 1971, which is the date "officially" recognised as the start of 747 operations in today's comms. There's nothing quite like a bit of re-telling of history as you wish it to be seen today!

Either which way, a sad day and a real blow to those hoping to fly the 747 for a few years to come though.

I hope at least one of these aircraft is saved for a museum somewhere in the UK for future generations to see what the 747 was like.
Sadly I doubt this will happen.

The big sadness here is that BA will use this as an excuse to make many crew redundant. They promised to protect the current A350 and 787 thus there will be fewer places to redeploy the 747 guys. The premature end to more than a few careers...........:{

So what would have been the final BA 747-400 passenger flight?

Quite fitting the 747 broke the subsonic NY-London record at the end to say good bye

Has there been any update regarding the A380’s on the back of this B747 news??

Don't think so but I saw 1 was ferried from CHR back to LHR yesterday.

I hope the Museum of Flight in East Fortune can get one to compliment the Concorde they already have.

What an almost out of the blue watershed moment for BA. It certainly marks an end of an era after nearly 50 years of operating various variants of the 747.

Like Concorde though, there is no place for sentiment in business and if retiring the 747s 4 years earlier than planned is necessary to save jobs and the airline, it has to be done I guess.

The aircraft played a pivotal role for the airline and its immediate predecessors, so I do hope that they will give them a proper send off and a socially distanced farewell tour of some sort can be arranged providing lockdown rules become more relaxed throughout the rest of the year.

For maintenance.

Amid the gloom, something slightly brighter. Good to see a BA LGW departure today - B777-200 (G-YMMD) to Bermuda. Let's hope it signifies BA's return to LGW.

With you there, Gurnard.

Maybe put a 744 into Duxford alongside Concorde.

The coat is on.......

....... or Cosford Museum?

No, hang on a minute, maybe not. 😁

I don't mean to be picky but there are a lot more staff facing redundancy then just 'crew'. Consider, for example, the number of engineers, refuellers, baggage handlers, cargo and various other ground based admin jobs that make it possible for a 747 to get into the air.

The focus in the press has been almost exclusively on pilots and cabin crew. I get that, it's the public image of an airline. As industry insiders maybe we should be showing a bit more tact when discussing 'staff' redundancies.

Wholeheartedly agree - have become a little tired of listening to the Unions talking only about crew - it takes many cogs to keep the wheel going. Also nonsense about using the retirement of an ageing fleet as an excuse to reduce heads - give me a break. VS have retired theirs as have many airlines in the past...they are gas guzzling during a time where there isn’t the demand to fill them at premium yield. I know there is a lot of ill feeling towards BA and my view is if you don’t like it, leave.

Looks like their European operations will transfer back to Gatwick on 9th September (checked Alicante, Malaga & Tenerife - probably others).

The Points Guy did an article yesterday with the list of routes -

http://thepointsguy.co.uk/news/ba-gatwick-return/

Is that actually true though? Reason I say it is it’s only 3 weeks or so since when looking to rebook there were LGW options to my destination. I went for City, end of August. The next day my new flight was cancelled, evidently along with LGW. Might the same merely happen for September once we get nearer the time on a rolling programme of postponement and cancellation?