Exclusive: British Airways cancels flights to Beijing

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• freckles says:

  8 Aug8 August 09:52

  Rebooting guidance online at BA:

  https://www.britishairways.com/travel-partner-connect/disruptions/2024/pkx-route-suspension-08aug24#latest

  • Rhys says:

    8 Aug8 August 09:58

    Thanks

• Ro says:

  8 Aug8 August 09:54

  Yes mine just got cancelled for next March

• Jet says:

  8 Aug8 August 09:55

  one in 6th Nov, one in 11Dec, both cancelled.

  calling now to see options

• Neal says:

  8 Aug8 August 09:56

  China Southern*

• barry cutters says:

  8 Aug8 August 10:06

  Would they rebook me on to Tokyo?

  My flight to Beijing was cancelled today.
  Booked on avios

  • Rhys says:

    8 Aug8 August 10:23

    Erm, no. Why would they rebook you to an entirely different destination over 1,000 miles away?

    • barry cutters says:

      8 Aug8 August 10:31

      I have no idea. that’s why I was asking.
      I was simply asking if they would change to their next nearest destination.

      • Bob says:

        8 Aug8 August 10:42

        they will only rebook as per the policy published online commented above

      • Rhys says:

        8 Aug8 August 10:58

        Their next nearest destination would be Shanghai, not Tokyo…

        • barry cutters says:

          8 Aug8 August 11:19

          OK but my point is I was only asking as I didn’t know.
          You didn’t have to put people down for asking a simple question.

          ‘No the destination would need to be the same’ would have been a nicer less cocky answer

        • Nick says:

          8 Aug8 August 11:36

          They will allow a rebooking to Shanghai if you ask, but not Tokyo as it’s too far away.

        • executiveclubber says:

          8 Aug8 August 12:16

          Another example of bizzarely hostile responses from HfP

        • Lee says:

          8 Aug8 August 20:53

          Exactly! The patronising, borderline hostile responses are why I barely comment, I used to years ago. No doubt this comment will be met with a barrage of abuse…

        • Rob says:

          8 Aug8 August 21:43

          You forget that we can pull up all of your historic comments in the click of a mouse 🙂

          4 Aug – rant against BA
          16 April – rant against Amex
          3 November – rant against BA
          22 October – rant against Tuscany
          9 October – rant against Marriott (x2 comments)
          6 October – rant against Marriott

          I’ve not left any out – this is your full contribution list. We need to go back to July 2022 before I can find a comment from you that is not a rant. And that July 2022 comment was asking a question, not actually contributing anything to the community 🙂

          Your first comment was April 2013 though, so we do appreciate you sticking around and we hope you’ve benefitted from the site over the years.

        • Charlie says:

          8 Aug8 August 21:26

          To barry cutters and alleged ‘executiveclubber’: are you surprised when Rhys and Rob have to deal with the stupidity of the comments on the recent RJ OWS thread? ‘Is it worth $149’? ‘What’s a FF number?’ ‘How do I change my FF number? [answered what seems like a million times] – the most amusing comment for me, was some entitled young person who claimed it was ‘…unreasonable that my BA app doesn’t show silver now that I am an RJ Sparrow’. Part of me hopes that Status Matcher pulled the offer because they read through the thread and realised just how thick or helpless or entitled a majority of the people subscribing to their offer are! So give Rob and Rhys a bit of slack here after effectively helping to give OWS to a load of people who would not have a hope in hell’s chance of getting anywhere near otherwise! …’what’s a tier point?’ 🙂

        • OnTheRun says:

          10 Aug10 August 10:18

          @Rob – even if @barry c’s previous comments were rants, in this instance, he wasn’t ranting. He was merely asking a question about re-routing and pulling up his ‘rant’ history seems rather churlish and uncalled for.

          Regrettably I do have to agree with some of the other posters – some of the HfP responses to posters can be caustic and belittling.

          Although people are not directly paying you for running this site, there are times when they can choose to use your referral links over somebody else’s.

          If someone has been ‘ranting’ since whatever year and it is not something you want on your site, then perhaps you should hire a moderator.

        • Rob says:

          10 Aug10 August 11:24

          You’re welcome to rant, but if you post nothing but rants for two years and then complain that we are ranting then I think you can expect to be called out 🙂

          If we get fed up your ranting or general lack of constructive input, we’ll just ban you because life’s too short.

          I think there is a general misunderstanding (although it’s not clear how) about how HfP works. Katie is 100% commercial so cut her from this discussion. All readers know that Rhys is travelling about 50% of the time. I am away at least 10 weeks per year and when in London have as many meetings, press events etc to cover as you’d expect. On top of all this, we are dealing with a vast email bag of reader queries every day, plus an average of 150 comments on here plus the forum.

          The cost of adding one extra person to the team would be around £80k inc bonuses, National Insurance, NEST etc (people with an encyclopedic knowledge of UK travel loyalty schemes don’t come cheap since we need to prize them out of a professional career somewhere else). We get paid £10 from Amex if we sell a free BA Amex card – other cards admittedly pay a little more but still. Our advertising income is effectively capped because we cap the number of ad slots. You can see how the maths isn’t great here.

          I appear to be typing his at 11.20am on a Saturday morning when I clearly could be doing with my kids instead.

• Voldemort says:

  8 Aug8 August 10:35

  Great news. This paves the way to provide slots for desperately needed extra daily flight to New York JFK.

  • Rob says:

    8 Aug8 August 10:55

    🙂

  • Danny says:

    8 Aug8 August 11:07

    I’m wondering what z-class cities are left in the US that BA wants to fly to next…

  • James C says:

    8 Aug8 August 11:57

    Fingers crossed they bring back SEZ (though please not from LGW…)

  • PH says:

    8 Aug8 August 16:18

    The return of the EWR morning flight would be a genuine improvement!!

  • Mikeact says:

    9 Aug9 August 15:01

    @Rob 1st time I’ve noticed you react like this….excellent. Mine haven’t always been 100%, as some posts are so infuriatingly annoying.

    • Gordon says:

      9 Aug9 August 19:02

      Especially the one directed at @Northernlass when she was stranded due to an impending hurricane, not a wise comment me thinks?

• Bernard says:

  8 Aug8 August 10:57

  China isn’t what it is.
  Better use for the metal elsewhere. And it’s not the extra flight time. Tye extra fuel costs less than the Siberian ATC charges would have.

  PS not exclusive. Bloomberg and Reuters both carried the news earlier this morning

  • Rhys says:

    8 Aug8 August 10:59

    By ‘earlier this morning’ I think you mean after we wrote about it…

    • RobH not Rob says:

      8 Aug8 August 11:06

      Strike 😉

    • Rob says:

      8 Aug8 August 11:06

      I think you’re getting confused about what ‘Exclusive’ means Bernard 🙂

      Are we meant to remove that wording now others have the story too?

    • Bernard says:

      8 Aug8 August 15:19

      Nope – Reuters had it first.
      But whatever the case, the redeployment of capital away from a failing economy is interesting.

      • Rhys says:

        8 Aug8 August 15:24

        I tried to find the Reuters article when you commented and couldn’t find it anywhere! Google thinks it was published ~2 hours ago.

      • Rob says:

        8 Aug8 August 15:29

        Guardian and Press Association both say we had it first in their coverage.

  • sigma421 says:

    8 Aug8 August 11:08

    It’s not just fuel though the aircraft is now away from base for longer than it would have been. Crew requirements may have gone up (relief pilots are required over certain sector lengths). Couple this with the fact that I imagine UK business interest in China has cooled (and that always drove more Shanghai/HK traffic than Beijing anyway) and I can see why the route has gone.

  • Edwin says:

    8 Aug8 August 14:07

    China is still what it is, but it is not in Western media for geopolitical reasons.

• Nicholas says:

  8 Aug8 August 11:10

  Chinese travellers will choose to fly on Chinese airlines as they increase capacity, which will hit ‘foreign’ airlines harder and harder.

  • sigma421 says:

    8 Aug8 August 11:14

    There is also a lot of capacity dumping going on from Chinese mainland airlines on capacity going east from Europe. Itineraries to Tokyo, Seoul etc. are now back in the £400 range out of the UK, there can’t be a lot of margin in that.

    • Yan says:

      8 Aug8 August 16:38

      There is a significant overcapacity issue in the Europe-China market. The supply is well above pre-COVID levels, but demand isn’t catching up due to a very weak recovery in long-haul overseas travel from Chinese tourists. In addition to the domestic economy dragging on consumption, there has been a fundamental change in how they perceive the West.

      Many second- and third-tier regional airports in mainland China now have direct flights to London with domestic carriers because it is easy to launch due to the bilateral Open Skies agreement and heavily subsidized by local governments for PR reasons, despite never making financial sense. It would be hard for foreign businesses to compete with this race to the bottom even if they get to fly the same route. US carriers are refusing to return to the China market unless Chinese carriers also skip Russian airspace.

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