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British Airways scraps Chengdu, to launch New Orleans?

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British Airways announced yesterday that it is closing its route to Chengdu in China after three years.

I have been calling out this route since it launched.  I was told by a BA employee that the plug was very nearly pulled before a single flight had departed, so poor were forward bookings.  I am not sure how it has limped on for three years, although I am sure that cargo must have played a part.

The last flight to Chengdu will depart on 12th January.

British Airways BA A380 flying

If you were far more cynical than me, you may link this news to reports that the Government was due to finally decide on Heathrow expansion today although the decision has now been delayed a few days longer.

British Airways is very keen for the third runway plans to be scrapped.  The chance of BA being given additional slots equal to its current % of slot control at Heathrow is somewhat lower than nil.  It faces both a massive increase in landing fees and a sharp increase in competition.  Is BA sending a message to the Government?  If we cannot make flights to China pay (along with all the routes to India launched and closed during the last decade) then where are the extra flights from a third runway going to go?

This is all speculation, of course.

As – it must be said – is the rumour that New Orleans will be the beneficiary of the slots and aircraft freed up from closing Chengdu.

There have been local press reports of a major airline announcement so this would make some sense, as would BA dropping back to a ‘safe’ US destination.

Have a think about whether you would be interested in a New Orleans holiday next year.  If the route is announced – and I stress that it isn’t certain – there will be two Club World seats immediately available on EVERY service.  You would have little trouble getting your preferred dates if you moved quickly.

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Comments (50)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Nick Burch says:
    18 Oct18 October 08:45

    OT Lufthansa PartnerPlusBenefit just emailed me to say that, if I booked a flight before the 31st of Dec, I could get business lounge access in Munich or Frankfurt airports for it. Email had a code, would just need to ring them with the code + PartnerPlusBenefit number + flight PNR.

    • xcalx says:
      18 Oct18 October 09:06

      I’m still waiting for the extra 1500 points from the double points sign up promo last week.

      • Rob says:
        18 Oct18 October 09:08

        Give it another couple of weeks then drop me a note – I can get that fixed.

        • xcalx says:
          18 Oct18 October 14:03

          I got a phone call this morning welcoming me to PPB and I mentioned the 3000 sign up and was informed that the extra 1500 points will be awarded within 11 weeks of first flight booking.

          • Rob says:
            18 Oct18 October 16:58

            It seems there has been some confusion on this which I will get PPB to clarify ASAP.

          • Edward Felt says:
            20 Oct20 October 15:11

            You should make contact and ask for the extra points. We had a call from them and informed them of the promotion, the additional points were added to our account within 24hours.

            Ed

  • GK says:
    18 Oct18 October 09:01

    Fits in with my theory that flights East to thinner routes will be via Doha, and BA creates more capacity flying West for QR transit traffic.

  • Callum says:
    18 Oct18 October 09:09

    BA not being able to fly to Chengdu won’t influence the government one jot – especially if they are going to reuse the slot to another destination.

    I know you attributed it to cynics, but I don’t think that theory has any credibility!

    • Mr(s) Entitled says:
      18 Oct18 October 09:29

      “I know you attributed it to cynics, but I don’t think that theory has any credibility!”

      That’s just what they want you to think! It’s not a conspiracy if they really are out to get you.

      • mark2 says:
        18 Oct18 October 11:25

        If they really are out to get you surely it’s a conspiracy rather than a conspiracy theory?

  • Jean Morgan says:
    18 Oct18 October 09:48

    I love New Orleans! I was there in January and again in May this year. A direct flight would have been great as it was such a pain trying to find reward seats to a gateway city with a decent connection to NOLA. In the end we flew to Dallas both times and then onwards with AA.

  • BrianD says:
    18 Oct18 October 10:42

    Oh dear…that’s inconvenient. I have a one-way reward flight booked for next Spring. Was hoping to take advantage of the 72-hour visa waiver before flying on to Japan as part of a big birthday trip. Although I’ve had individual flights cancelled before, I haven’t had an entire route cancelled. Do BA’s normal rebook or refund rules apply? The BA website states that they will normally rebook on the next available BA flight, but I assume that a refund will be the only option if they’re no longer flying that route. Any advice gratefully accepted.

    • Rob says:
      18 Oct18 October 12:08

      BA has not emailed travel agents yet with the policy. They will be looking at what other options exist – there are few other options to Chengdu so they may just decide to refund everyone rather than try to rebook.

      • BrianD says:
        18 Oct18 October 12:22

        Thanks for the quick reply. Guess we’ll sit tight and see what happens over the next couple of weeks or so. Plenty of time to mess around with ITA Matrix and look at BA partner reward charts in the meantime.

        Thanks again.

        • JamesLHR says:
          18 Oct18 October 16:08

          CTU via HKG with BA/CX is always a oneworld option!

          • BrianD says:
            18 Oct18 October 17:06

            Thanks for the tip, JamesLHR. I’ve had a quick chat with BA and they offered to rebook us to either Shanghai or Hong Kong, but we’d have to find our own way to Chengdu from there. Shanghai doesn’t work for the visa waiver, so I’ll look into connections from HKG. Someone on Flyertalk was offered BA to AUH and EY onwards to CTU, so that maybe another option. We’re also just up the road from Dublin, so to speak, and DUB to CTU via AMS looks promising. At least we have lots of options to consider.

  • RussellH says:
    18 Oct18 October 10:45

    And there was me thinking that the Europhobes all knew for sure that we were going to ramp up our flights to China once we were untied from from “Brussels”.

    Certainly true though that BA is not in favour of a third runway.

  • Leafwarbler says:
    18 Oct18 October 10:53

    Not surprised – there were only 3 of us in J cabin in June last year.

    O/T anyone know if I stand any chance of using a Companion Ticket to Cancun in Feb/Mar next year? Dates quite flexible but 3+ weeks apart. Any advice welcome.

    • Leafwarbler says:
      18 Oct18 October 10:53

      Oops – meant 2018

      • Genghis says:
        18 Oct18 October 11:16

        You do if you book at t-355.

        • Chelseafi says:
          18 Oct18 October 11:42

          I’m confused how you use a 241 companion voucher, on the popular routes, how do you book t-355, on website or over the phone and how does the return part work? thanks

          • Rob says:
            18 Oct18 October 12:06

            You can book the outbound online as soon as it pops up, at midnight-ish. This will be a one-way booking obviously.

            When the return becomes available, you need to ring BA and get them to add it to your outbound sector. If you wait until 8am you can ring the UK call centre, if you want to call at midnight you need to ring somewhere else in the world.

            You may be asked to pay the £35 per person change fee although some agents seem to be willing to waive this.

          • Chelseafi says:
            18 Oct18 October 14:08

            Thank you, already done Atlanta first class return in Easter Hols 2014 and this July did open jaw NY First with Chicago CW return, family of four, schools hols, these routes had a lot of availability, so planning for summer 2018 now and fancy West Coast US. Only couple of years ago I’d never heard of open jaw flights, so thank you & all the other contributors.

          • Chris says:
            18 Oct18 October 14:51

            For the record did just this for a CE redemption next year (not as adventurous but still better than wasting the companion voucher) and the BAEC agent didn’t even mention the service charge and it wasn’t applied. Seemed as though the adding-return-leg-to-BAPP-voucher is a known ‘thing’ that doesn’t attract the service charge

          • AndyL says:
            19 Oct19 October 08:45

            And to be clear Rob, it is possible to redeem the companion voucher(s) when booking the return flights, when calling the contact centre ?

          • Rob says:
            19 Oct19 October 09:09

            Yes

  • RussellH says:
    18 Oct18 October 13:19

    AIUI, this is really saying that there is no way that the airport itself can finance any third runway. Normally a business would expect to finance investment either out of profits or by raising further capital. Not by raising its prices massively!

    And who knows what the oil price will be in ten years times. At $200 a barrel many routes will cease to be viable and a third runway would be a massive white elephant.

    • Bob says:
      18 Oct18 October 19:25

      If oil prices crept up, the huge capacity in US shale oil which has been mothballed will be brought back on stream – there is almost no realistic scenario in which oil will cost anything like $200 in 10 years…

    • Callum says:
      18 Oct18 October 19:30

      The global aviation industry would need to plummet for a third runway at Heathrow to ever be unneeded. It could do with it now even if they’re not going to add a single flight! Gatwick too.

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