How much smaller is the British Airways long haul fleet post pandemic?

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

• BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

  7 Jun7 June 05:48

  For day to day operations there will be fewer as aircraft are taken out for the various mandatory maintenance checks that must be carried out to strict schedule. And the “heavy” C and D checks can take a couple of weeks.

  And then there are those planes that go tech that need looking after.

  And the A380s seem to be very temperamental causing all sorts of issues and cancellations at the moment.

  So there is huge pressure on the fleet and there isn’t much slack for pro active cancellations because of the 80-20 slot use rules (not only at LHR but other airports as well).

  Not sure I’d want to be an engineering or operations planner with BA at the moment!

  • Paul says:

    7 Jun7 June 06:57

    Not just the A380. The A350 routes seem to have suffered a high level of late cancellations over recent months.

  • Richie says:

    7 Jun7 June 07:33

    The A380 aircraft to flight allocations seem to have de-risked operations a bit.

  • AJA says:

    7 Jun7 June 07:44

    Why are the A380s so temperamental? Is it because they are so large and complex that they have more that can go wrong?

    • The Original David says:

      7 Jun7 June 08:12

      French build quality 😀

      • R001 says:

        7 Jun7 June 08:28

        Combined with Welsh wings !

    • Rhys says:

      7 Jun7 June 09:32

      They’ve been in storage the longest probably

      • JK says:

        7 Jun7 June 09:49

        Yes, QF have the same problem, don’t think they liked being stored so long. Also we still think of them as new aircraft, but a lot are 12+ years old now.

      • Lady London says:

        7 Jun7 June 10:48

        Yeah, just like leaving your car in storage is not good for it.

        Parking them somewhere dry like the Arizona dessert is probably as good for stood cars as for planes – but they will still deteriorate

        I love the A380 as a passenger; Rhys has mentioned before though that it has less cargo space relatively

      • BahrainLad says:

        9 Jun9 June 09:11

        Also BA stored them in wet and damp France, to save money. Not a good environment for grounded aircraft.

        • Rhys says:

          9 Jun9 June 09:15

          For really long term storage (5+ years), dry is obviously better but for a couple years I think this has less of an impact. The bigger issue is that aircraft simply do not like being grounded. It gets very complicated and expensive bringing them back into service.

  • Rui N. says:

    7 Jun7 June 09:08

    D check takes way longer than a couple of weeks. Best case scenario 4 weeks, more likely 6/7. But no one would schedule a D check for peak season. That’s what winters are for.

• Olly says:

  7 Jun7 June 06:06

  Where are Virgin getting their new aircraft from for all their new routes? Are they bringing them back from storage or leasing new ones?

  • Rob says:

    7 Jun7 June 06:19

    A330neo fleet coming in.

  • Chris W says:

    7 Jun7 June 07:47

    Virgin got lucky with their delivery slots. They are in a very strong position right now hence all the new routes. they must be bursting at the seams at T3

    • Rui N. says:

      7 Jun7 June 09:09

      Not lucky, more like the A330neo has been quite the flop in terms of sales so you can basically get as many as quickly as you can afford them.

      • Rhys says:

        7 Jun7 June 09:34

        We will see in 5/10 years if hte neo is a flop. Airbus think the peak replacement cycle is yet to come.

        In some ways it’s good timing for them, too. 787/A350 order backlogs mean the neo is much more attractive (in addition to being much cheaper).

        • Rui N. says:

          7 Jun7 June 11:24

          What happens in 5-10 years is quite irrelevant to know that right now the A330neo is a flop.

        • Rhys says:

          7 Jun7 June 11:51

          ….but not irrelevant to the overall relevance of the program!

      • Lady London says:

        7 Jun7 June 10:50

        Where is the key location of Airbus these days? someone said they were in Hamburg..m

• Stu p says:

  7 Jun7 June 06:13

  13 hours a day seems very low??

  • Rob says:

    7 Jun7 June 06:19

    If you click through to the LinkedIn article it came from there. It’s probably averaged across a year with maintenance etc factored in.

  • Bagoly says:

    7 Jun7 June 09:46

    I guess 13 is hours actually in the air, rather than gate-to-gate.
    Taxiing and holding at runway for 4 flights adds 1 to 2 hours per day (especially at LHR).
    And arriving early (all those eastbound TATLs) may well average another hour per day.
    So hours blocked per day is probably 15-16.
    Then there is de-boarding, replenishing and boarding.
    And maintenance is perhaps another 5%?
    Plus contingency (when a ‘plane goes tech you need to have a fair chance of being able to provide a substitute with not much delay)

    Looking at it from routes – I trust they are smart enough to have a ‘plane on a 12-hour each way TATL then do NY, so it gets in two round trips in 2 days rather than one – back in the 1970s BA were leaders in linear programming.
    But with so much of the business being East Coast TATL, there are presumably a lot of ‘planes which do 8 hours out, 7 hours back, and that’s it.
    Using them for short-haul to say Madrid and back in-between does happen, apparently for freight, but complicates arrangements, and does not bring in significant extra revenue from passengers.

    With Eurostar capacity-limited I wonder whether they will bring back large aircraft (they did use 747s) for very peaky flights, E.g. Paris-London on Friday evenings.

• zanderblue says:

  7 Jun7 June 06:15

  I’d suspect that seats available pre and post covid would be an even worse comparison than aircraft count?

• patrick C says:

  7 Jun7 June 06:21

  I think BA will use more leases to bridge the gap if there is demand. They can also quite easily get a few extra long haul aircraft if desired as the order book isn’t as crazy and aome airlines on it won’t be able to take the full load.
  The 747 retirement and current seat pricing probably increases long haul profits massively due to much better fuel efficiency.
  Where do they fly the a380’s these days?

  • Chris W says:

    7 Jun7 June 07:41

    This issue is affecting a number of airlines though – i.e. Qantas too. They retired lots of aircraft during the pandemic and now that demand has roared back, they can’t get new replacements fast enough.
    There aren’t endless wet lease aircraft available worldwide. It would be a great time to be in the wet lease business.

• Kowalski says:

  7 Jun7 June 06:28

  At the time it seemed rather short sighted to retire the entire 747 fleet. BA must surely be regretting it now

  • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

    7 Jun7 June 07:08

    They were due to have been all gone by this year anyway.

    https://www.headforpoints.com/2020/07/16/british-airways-planning-to-retire-its-entire-boeing-747-fleet/

    • Mark says:

      7 Jun7 June 08:06

      Next year, after all 18 A350s and 787-10s delivered as well as a significant proportion of the 777-9s.

      • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

        7 Jun7 June 08:28

        Wishing my life away thinking we are in 2024 now!

        But most of would have been gone by now anyway on a phased withdrawal based on the date of their D checks I.e. airlines usually remove from the fleet just before a D check is due because of the cost (we’re talking costs in £millions)

        • Mark says:

          7 Jun7 June 08:43

          Yes, most would have been but with rather more replacement aircraft than have actually been delivered.

          BA also has options on an additional 6 787-10s to help fill the gap on the 777-9 delivery, though if converted (which seems likely) they’re unlikely to arrive until 2025/26 – assuming Boeing can get a grip on the various quality issues that have repeatedly delayed deliveries.

        • TGLoyalty says:

          7 Jun7 June 09:36

          Ifs and buts aside with the delays to new aircraft deliveries I’m pretty sure they would’ve stayed on beyond 2024. Some would’ve had their D checks done and continue flying.

• Erico1875 says:

  7 Jun7 June 06:39

  I wonder how much bonus the execs will get for shrinking their business?

• FCP says:

  7 Jun7 June 06:39

  Can non of the 747 flight be brought back for high density routes? I know the oil/fuel price is high but air fares are shockingly high.

  • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

    7 Jun7 June 07:01

    BA sold all 31 off other than 4 they donated them to museums..

    And many of them have already scrapped.

    (And they were going to be phased out of the fleet by this year anyway)

  • Rhys says:

    7 Jun7 June 09:36

    Many had expensive engineering checks coming up that weren’t worthwhile.

    • TGLoyalty says:

      7 Jun7 June 11:25

      If they would have had all their new planes on time

  • jjoohhnn says:

    7 Jun7 June 10:15

    There are enough second hand A380’s out there that they could get some if they really wanted some dense aircraft but the cost of this is prohibitive when you don’t want them long term.

    BA also laid off a load of pilots and cabin crew alongside the aircraft so they might have limitations on how quickly they can grow the fleet due to this. Old Boeing 747 pilots would need to go through training to be able to fly an A350/380 as the cockpits are quite different, so it’s not necessarily sufficient to just lease in a chunk of new aircraft..

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