BA 747's to Paris CDG

[101]

With the possibility of travelling on BA to CDG in the near future I had a little look on the BA website, and was surprised when it says that they have 2 daily flights there using a 744. Have they always been doing this, is it a seasonal thing or is there some other reason? Just seems a bit strange to me!

101

[GoEDI]

What flights are you looking at?!

[Wannabe Flyboy]

It was because of the French ATC strike and some earlier flights were cancelled. One off.

[101]

Many Thanks Wannabe Flyboy.

I cant find the flights I was originally looking at, but just flicking through the BA timetable on their webpage shows another 747 being used for the 1900 departure on the 19th May....

101

[TopBunk]

101

The data you have is incorrect. The 1900 hrs flight on the 19th May is being operated by an A319. The flights on the 19th are all being operated by Airbus 319/320/321 aircraft. The 1900 hrs departure is not quite (but nearly) full.

[HZ123]

There was a 744 operation CDG-LHR on Monday evening as I was at CDG and saw it with my own eyes.

[Cyrano]

I've just gone onto ba.com and looked up the LHR-CDG timetable for today (19 May). Most flights are shown as 319/320/321 with the exception of BA 308 (STD 1045) and BA 324 (STD 1900), for which the equipment is shown as 744. So I agree with 101.

TopBunk: if you're seeing today's 1900 flight listed as operated by an A319 there seems to be a data consistency problem somewhere. Where are you seeing this? An Amadeus terminal?

[Dutchie]

I know KLM used to do AMS LHR on the 74 as line training, maybe similar?

[TopBunk]

Cyrano

Data from internal BA systems, the BA308 is being operated by G-EUPA, a A319. I could even (but won't, of course) tell you the flight crew names.

[brain fade]

It was the 315. I saw it too

[FlyboyUK]

A friend of mine who is joining Quantas was told after his interview that they were going to be operating some ex-LHR european routes on behalf of BA.

Perhaps this is one of them?

[HZ123]

It was there as there was anticipated industrial action over the loss of a French Public Holiday on Monday. BA positioned the a/c so they could combine services if it became an issue later in the day. Why does everything have to have a sinister cause.

[TopBunk]

I think the second A stands for Aerial

[Cyrano]

TopBunk, HZ123:

Very happy to believe you on this one! Positioning for extra lift in case of industrial action makes perfect sense.

However ,there seems to be some sort of glitch in the ba.com timetable, and not just a wrong "aircraft type" field.

I go into the "Planning my trip -> our flight timetable" page ( here (http://www.britishairways.com/travel/schedules/public/en_gb?prim=plantrip) ) and select outbound LHR-CDG today, back today.

It tells me that the 10.45 and 19.00 flights out today are on 744s.

Then I do the same, but this time select "one-way".

Now today's 10.45 flight changes to a 319 [which it presumably was] but the 19.00 is still a 744. :uhoh:

Then I try an outbound today, back tomorrow, and all of a sudden all the 744s have disappeared from LHR-CDG today and it's an all-Airbus schedule.

:confused:

[Rollingthunder]

And Territory not Territories.

[Unwell_Raptor]

Oh how times have changed! When BA was newly merged I remember a major strike caused by management allocating a long haul TriStar to Paris because the SH one was broken. LH crew weren't about to soil their hands with a 50 minute hop to Paris, oh no!

[BALIX]

A couple of years back I travelled from GLA to LGW in a BA 777 when a 734 went tech and they combined two flights. I think that the LH crews were just pleased to be flying at all round then in the year following 9/11.

It was great - the skymap thingy was working and when one of the guys up front said we were passing Manchester (as they always do) we could see he was telling the truth :p