British Airways to refurbish the A380 fleet?

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• 1ATL says:

  25 Feb25 February 04:40

  Also.heard similar regarding the BA A380…. only my version is only 6 are being prepped for service. Upper deck CW Suite and a revised 8 in First downstairs where it is at the moment. Weather or not any of this materialises remains to be seen.

  • BJ says:

    25 Feb25 February 06:27

    I hope it does though, I so love the a380. Would like to see BA have confidence in it and snap up the others available on the second hand market. The idea of swapping out 2x 747 for 1x a380 also appeals to me as it frees up slots to broaden the route network which becomes increasingly possible with deliveries of smaller more efficient aircraft. Multiple daily frequencies on single routes don’t really benefit anybody except very frequent business travellers on said route. For most pax, a choice of two daily rotations to medium and longhaul destinations is probably good enough.

    • Michael C says:

      25 Feb25 February 07:10

      Me too, BJ: though will miss the economy seats at the back upstairs!

      • BJ says:

        25 Feb25 February 14:54

        Never flown economy on one but I quite believe it will be best Y experience in the air too .

    • Chrisasaurus says:

      25 Feb25 February 07:43

      Sounds a lot like the original business case for the a380!

      Perhaps there’s a chance that as routes return there will be consolation and therefore it’ll work but I feel more likely given the cheap planes out there that smaller, full planes with oodles of cargo space are the likely horse to back

    • Doug M says:

      25 Feb25 February 10:12

      “ Multiple daily frequencies on single routes don’t really benefit anybody except very frequent business travellers on said route”

      So those that often pay the high fares.

      • BJ says:

        25 Feb25 February 15:02

        Yeah, money talks at the end of the day. However, from environmental and airport congestion perspectives I think governments and regulators should be looking closely at the tradeoffs between flight frequencies and loads to ascertain if there are simple things we could do better.

• Andrew says:

  25 Feb25 February 06:29

  The entire upper deck with business class would seem an excessive number of seats. Emirates, Qatar and Etihad have first class and a large bar area upstairs with their business class. So to fill the entire upper deck with business class might be the largest business cabin of any carrier. Perhaps they could fill that on a JFK service. But one thing is for certain is that the numbers of people travelling for business will never ever bounce back to where is was so this seems an odd strategy if true.

  • BJ says:

    25 Feb25 February 06:44

    Wasn’t the original SQ layout entirely business class on the upper deck?

    • Flyoff says:

      25 Feb25 February 07:04

      One version was. I flew once where there were only 12 of us in the cabin. A vast empty place. This has to be a risk to BA and an opportunity for lots of OpUps.

      • Chrisasaurus says:

        25 Feb25 February 07:43

        Please tell me you organised a game of cricket

      • BJ says:

        25 Feb25 February 15:08

        My partner had a similar experience on SQ on Boxing Day about a year or two after the plane launched. He said the SQ cabin crew stuck very closely to their usual service standards despite the near deserted business cabin, possibly a few extra enquiries if he needed anything but not much.

    • Dubious says:

      25 Feb25 February 14:52

      Not the original but a later variant.

  • Rob says:

    25 Feb25 February 08:10

    If you were old enough to remember the dotcom crash of 2000 and the financial crisis of 2007/8, both of which I worked through and when I saw many similar comments, you wouldn’t say that.

    • Andrew says:

      25 Feb25 February 08:21

      But this isn’t just about financial impacts, it’s about the way people do business that’s been changed – zoom will replace a lot of face to face meetings, the same as working from home more regularly will become more commonplace. That’s why business travel won’t rebound in the same way as previous financial crashes. And that aside, an entire upper deck filled with business class is very rare, with perhaps only a few of the SQ aircraft doing this and everyone else thinking that’s too much and putting First or some economy up there too, as well as social spaces (which I’m assuming BA would never do).

      • Andrew (different one) says:

        25 Feb25 February 09:16

        We’ve been hearing for the last couple of decades at least that telecommuting is going to replace business travel. The only thing that’s changed in the last year is that people have been forced to give it a go. In my opinion, although it mostly works, it’s no replacement for a face to face meeting.

      • Rob says:

        25 Feb25 February 09:55

        No-one is going to do Zoom meetings when half the people are in a room in-person. All zoom works. 50% Zoom, 50% in-person? Not so sure.

        People want to travel. People want to meet the people they are doing business with. That is never going to change. Video conferencing has been around for ever and its reputation stank. This was partly via bad marketing of course – had it been sold as a super-premium product and only installed in CEO’s offices then it would have been more popular. For various reasons it became associated as something that only losers use.

        To quote that old airline advert, if your competitor is willing to get on a plane to come to see you to pitch his product, good luck trying to win that contract with a zoom call.

        • BSI1978 says:

          25 Feb25 February 10:09

          I think Rob where this time around will differ, in addition to the original Andrew’s comments/rationale is the impact the growing environmental aspect/consideration will have on this. Something which wasn’t really the case (or some firms paid lipservice too) in previous recessions or crashes.

          That plus the lived in experience of updated Zoom/video-conferencing etc. leads me to suspect that business travel will never recover to those levels again.

        • Rhys says:

          25 Feb25 February 10:31

          The lived experience of Zoom/video conferencing is that it is crap!

        • Andrew says:

          25 Feb25 February 10:51

          I guess time will tell. Covid has changed shopping habits too and shifted things online to the detriment of the high street and for someone that hates shopping online and much prefers the instore retail experience I hope this reverts back too. And in a similar way, I used to spend 50% of my working week travelling with the odd day in my base office, the odd day at home and the rest here, there and everywhere – no bendy card required for me to achieve Spire IHG. So I hope you’re right and I’m wrong Rob, I enjoyed my old life and you’re right, the zoom life sucks, but I’m being realistic about what the future holds and I fear I am right on this one.

        • Dev says:

          25 Feb25 February 10:58

          Try doing zoom or similar in Africa where the culture still favours face to face meetings interlaced with lots of tea/coffee/snacks, and chit chat about family/politics/health … something which you cannot replicate including those personal relationships over a zoom call?

          Business travel will return, just not as much for those in the west!

        • Chrisasaurus says:

          25 Feb25 February 11:17

          And in the other side too Rob – say you’re looking at two similar jobs with one happy for you to travel and one insisting on zoom. Which do you choose?

        • John W says:

          25 Feb25 February 11:35

          I agree , our company expects people to travel again as soon as restrictions are lifted . Can’t connect the same way remotely

        • Florian says:

          25 Feb25 February 12:13

          This is also going to be the case for work from home. If 70% of people are in the office all the time, you will be left out if always remote. People are also tired of zoom calls having to take 30 minutes while it should be a 5 minutes chat at someone’s desk.

        • BJ says:

          25 Feb25 February 15:13

          Not forgetting people always want to do all the other stuff they do on business trips that they won’t or are less likely to do when at home.

        • Dubious says:

          25 Feb25 February 16:06

          I agree – at the end of the day human nature has not changed. It is those small informal meetings and conversations one has with peers that’s give rise to trust, relationships as well as ideas and solutions.

          Video-conferencing has not provide a solution for the loss of these and I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding happening because many of us have made connections that were are trading on. Give it another 12 months and this gap will be more recognizable. I have recent hires in my organisation that I really struggle to integrate with the rest of the team as it’s been a lot of WFH.
          And I have struggled to network outside the organization as no matter how many webinars I attend there are no offline chats or opportunities to interact with strangers unlike face to face meetings.

        • Aston100 says:

          25 Feb25 February 16:47

          I think you are out of touch Rob.
          Perhaps in your financial circles people may prefer to travel for work again and do face to face meetings, but across my broad range of colleagues, contacts and friends from across various industries – this is not the case.
          And yes before some smart arse jumps in, these friends & colleagues would have been travelling for work quite extensively in many cases.

        • Mouse says:

          25 Feb25 February 16:58

          I agree with Rob & Rhys here. I and most others i know who travel a lot for work can’t wait to get back in the air.

        • Aeronaut says:

          25 Feb25 February 17:54

          Though of course, given the nature of your business, it’d be hard to claim that you are an entirely neutral observer… HfP definitely has skin in this game!

        • Andrew says:

          28 Feb28 February 19:18

          Try finding a time slot when 1/3 of the people are west coast US, 1/3 are Europe and 1/3 are Japan/Korea… when 1/3 are at 5am, 1/3 midday and 1/3 10pm most are unhappy…

          Zoom will not replace face-to-face for important meetings, once circumstances allow!

    • Mark says:

      25 Feb25 February 10:18

      And of course BA has always managed to fill more premium seats on premium heavy routes than most competitors. Who else operated 747s with 100 first and business class seats as BA were in the premium heavy config?

      On the flip side, most businesses have been through an extended period of little or no travel, to a much greater extent than in previous crises. That will have forced new ways of working which if seen to be effective could reduce long-term demand especially for businesses looking to save money in order to pay down pandemic incurred debt. And increasingly businesses are going to be under pressure to demonstrate they are doing their bit to address the impact of flying amongst other things on climate change.

      It will be interesting to see how things pan out.

      • Opus says:

        25 Feb25 February 10:46

        I have to agree with Rob here. Everybody is going to come out of this zoom phase once you’re beginning to see that your competitors are taking your business from you because they’re willing to travel.

        People don’t understand that a lot of business travel is about relationship building and fostering, which zoom can’t really replace with in person meetings. I think business travel will come back.

        If you’re hearing businesses say things like “oh we did not know how much we could do remotely” actually you did but nobody ever wanted to do it.

        • Red Flyer says:

          25 Feb25 February 10:52

          My MD is keen for us to get back on a plane and meet our key accounts ASAP. We are the sales team so face to face is key but think zoom will be an enhancement for our back office that will replace the previous painful conference calls they had with people huddled around a shonky speakerphone for their interaction with admin counterparts.

        • Rob says:

          25 Feb25 February 11:09

          Even in our game, you would be surprised how much business we do with people I have met casually at conferences. Yes, they read the site etc etc but until we actually bump into other in a coffee queue somewhere and they put a name to a face nothing happens. This is especially true in our case where companies often don’t realise that we do actually run a ‘proper’ media organisation here behind the scenes.

          The Avios person who arranged the Nectar ad campaign on HfP last month – which was reassuringly expensive for them – was someone I met at a conference in late 2019. I doubt it would have happened otherwise.

    • Chris Heyes says:

      25 Feb25 February 11:13

      Rob I remember “honest”
      Funnily as it turned out (although not funny of course) my biggest gains was because of 9/11 I more than 6 times my investment within 12 months
      having sold my iomart shares just before dotcom crash left me with a large pot to invest glad i decided to wait before reinvesting, unfortunatly every disaster is a good time to invest (i went for Vod for dividend growth income) plus Stagecoach and Mathew Brown £1.20ish a share taken over by S&N for £6 plus
      I have to say 9/11 was very good for me (unfortunatly of cause)
      my grandchildren all have Vod shares tied up for them until they reach 18 added to every year (down at the moment)
      which breaches the ? is it a good time to invest ?

  • Rhys says:

    25 Feb25 February 08:43

    I’m not sure it would be bigger than the existing BA seat map, except it would be on one deck rather than spread across two. Club Suite is marginally less dense than ying-yang, so that would help too.

• Doc says:

  25 Feb25 February 06:51

  I saw a BA A380 fly into Heathrow on Tuesday. Would this be the reason?

  • Rob says:

    25 Feb25 February 08:07

    No. They need to be flown every few weeks to keep the pilots licenced and to keep the aircraft in shape.

    • Tom says:

      25 Feb25 February 09:33

      Sorry to be pedantic Rob, but they don’t need to be flown to keep the pilots licenced. That can be achieved in the sim. Flying is likely to be for maintenance reasons to avoid expensive and lengthy storage checks.

  • Andrew says:

    25 Feb25 February 10:54

    In Sam Chui’s recent vlog flying out of Doha I noticed 3 BA A380s parked up – they really have dumped them all over the place for the last year.

• Nick says:

  25 Feb25 February 08:35

  110 CS on the upper deck.

  • Rob says:

    25 Feb25 February 09:51

    I was told 108, which is of course a multiple of 4 🙂

    Not sure if F is up or down though – but F shrinks to 8 suites.

    We’ll take that as official confirmation though Nick 🙂

    • chris1922 says:

      25 Feb25 February 10:29

      I understood BA’s F product was too heavy to go on upper deck, which is of course where Airbus envisage it would be, hence the large toilet up stairs. The new F Suite is probably heavier again…

      • Andrew says:

        25 Feb25 February 10:55

        Heavier than the EK First suite? All that bling must weigh a bit!

• T says:

  25 Feb25 February 08:43

  Big fan of the a380. Even if they don’t buy more (likely) there will be plenty of cheap spare parts available from all the scrapped ones 😉

  • marcw says:

    25 Feb25 February 10:07

    Airbus is still supporting the 380 programme. They just don’t build any more frames.

• memesweeper says:

  25 Feb25 February 08:56

  Can the A380 fly to the BA terminal in JFK? If not, I can’t think of another route a premium heavy A380 would make sense on.

  • Rhys says:

    25 Feb25 February 09:00

    BA doesn’t want to use it to JFK because that’s a heavy business route and business travellers prefer frequency.

    In the past, BA has flown A380s to LA, Miami, Johannesburg, Boston…

    • ChrisW says:

      25 Feb25 February 09:37

      + SFO, HKG and SIN in the past.

      High passenger demand but low freight… MIA and CPT in the winter perhaps?

  • Andrew says:

    25 Feb25 February 09:07

    Are BA still planning to move in with AA at JFK?

    • Rhys says:

      25 Feb25 February 09:10

      Haven’t heard anything to the contrary

    • Rhys says:

      25 Feb25 February 13:06

      That document is from 2019 so not exactly an update on what is happening!

      • ChrisC says:

        25 Feb25 February 14:08

        I posted the link to show what was planned for T8.

        I read elsewhere that the work at T8 started last year and is continuing but works on the rest of JFK hasn’t started due to Port Authority funding issues and work on the new mainly airline funded terminals can’t start until the PA has done some works they are responsible for.

• Mark says:

  25 Feb25 February 08:57

  I’ve long suspected BA would put all CS on the upper deck. Makes a great deal of sense from a space usage perspective as it would use the space currently occupied by the floor level storage bins for the foot end of the seat where lack of headroom isn’t an issue. Give the larger seat footprint against the current CW that would go some way to offsetting the lower seating density, especially if coupled with a smaller First cabin.

  If I recall correctly Qatar puts its Super Diamond seats on the upper deck in a similar setup (albeit not all the upper deck is used that way).

  Currently 14F+97CW, so if it is 8F+110CS that wouldn’t be so different and opens up a considerable amount of space downstairs for WT+ and economy seats displaced from the upper deck.

  Either way with all the 747s gone, and delivery of the 777-9s likely to be pushed out some way BA is very likely to need those A380s.

  • ChrisW says:

    25 Feb25 February 15:37

    Isn’t Y+ where airlines are making all their profit from nowadays?

    • Rhys says:

      25 Feb25 February 15:59

      No. Premium economy is on par or slightly more profitable than other cabins per metre squared, but business still contributes a large amount to the overall profitability of a flight!

• David S says:

  25 Feb25 February 10:07

  Surely there will also be a need for Capacity to get all Cruise Line employees back to their ships at some point. Temporary endeavour I know but a good business opportunity

  • marcw says:

    25 Feb25 February 10:51

    Charter flights.

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