British Airways announces further A380 and B787 routes

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British Airways has announced additional A380 and Boeing 787 routes as more new aircraft are delivered. The current total is 3 x A380 and 4 x B787, but this continues to increase.

The A380’s are currently used for Los Angeles and Hong Kong with Johannesburg being added in February. Boeing 787’s currently fly to Toronto and Newark and will fly to Austin from March.

The latest additions to the network will be:

Washington – A380 services begin on September 1st

Hyderabad – B787 services begin on March 30th

Chengdu – B787 services begin on May 5th

Philadelphia – B787 services being on June 5th

Calgary – B787 services begin on July 5th

The latest announcements on capacity increases (which usually means more Avios reward seats) are:

Chengdu moving from 3 per week to 5 per week from May 5th

Tokyo Haneda moving from 5 per week to 7 per week from May 6th

Mexico City moving from 5 per week to 6 per week from April 27th

Cape Town moving from 7 per week to 10 per week (date not stated)

Because of the extra new capacity, these do appear to be accretive launches with no news of routes being dropped so far.

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British Airways and Avios

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

jhj says:

24 Dec24 December 07:37

Drama Ba. This even will not help even they would have 1000 more aircraft more. This even will not help. Because the do not like to give the service that customers are happy. Even it would be great that Drama Ba for xmas will put the seats open. Than we would be happy. So if not book other airlines and forget Drama Ba
- richie says:
  
  24 Dec24 December 10:28
  
  maybe he is BA Baracus, and he aint getting on no Plane!!
- Joe says:
  
  26 Dec26 December 18:17
  
  I have no idea what you’re trying to say.
  - The Other Steve says:
    
    27 Dec27 December 16:15
    
    I think the appropriate response to that is ¿Que?
Welshie says:

24 Dec24 December 08:05

Drama Ba…..is he related to the Chelsea striker??
Tim Millea says:

24 Dec24 December 08:43

I would like to see the 787 used as intended on point to point routes, i.e. from British airports other than London. Does BA have any routes left now not from London?
- callum says:
  
  24 Dec24 December 10:33
  
  When did BA ever say they intended to use the 787 on non-London routes?
  
  The only proper BA route I know of is Edinburgh to Ibiza next year.
- Mark says:
  
  24 Dec24 December 11:05
  
  There is very little chance of that. BA would struggle to build up a hub of sufficient scale elsewhere in the UK to make it worthwhile. The last long-haul route to operate from a base outside of London was the Manchester-New York service, which had a single Boeing 767 based at Manchester. If that suffered a technical problem at the last moment it meant an automatic cancellation with no other aircraft available and the cost of maintaining and crewing that aircraft were relatively high as well.
  
  Far better for BA to have partner American Airlines operate the route and focus instead on other routes from London. Similarly BA operates from London to far more destinations in the US that any of the American flag carriers do, simply because it is much more cost-effective for BA to serve them from its hub in London than for the American carriers to attempt to operate services from non-hub cities in the US.
  
  Edinburgh-Ibiza will use an aircraft based in London that would otherwise night-stop in Edinburgh following a northbound evening flight, hence the rather antisocial flight times…. that model obviously only works for short-haul and for very limited flights.
- Rob says:
  
  24 Dec24 December 11:08
  
  No. Except for the forthcoming Ibiza to Edinburgh!
  
  Not sure if Paris to New York on OpenSkies is legally a BA operated flight or not.
- CV says:
  
  24 Dec24 December 12:49
  
  One of the selling points for the 787 was long haul from regional airports, but for BA to fly out of say Edi does then require opening a new base (local crew, offices, maintenance etc). BA closed all their bases to concentrate into London, its hard to imagine how and when they will branch out again especially when fighting against airlines such as Easyjet.
  
  You wil see Virgin fly a service from Glasgow to Orlando in the summer. Not sure now, but this was at some point operated by crew from Manc or London who had to position up for the flight (additional travel costs and hotels for them).
  
  Edi to Ibiza, well that might be a nice avios redemption weekend away.
  - CV says:
    
    24 Dec24 December 12:55
    
    Cancel that. Flight arrives into Ibiza at 0235, then leaves Ibiza at 0335.
    - The Other Steve says:
      
      27 Dec27 December 16:17
      
      What’s wrong with that? The clubs don’t open til midnight.
  - Mark says:
    
    24 Dec24 December 13:16
    
    Virgin does operate a few long haul leisure services from Manchester and Glasgow. Not sure how they are crewed, but the aircraft are Gatwick based and position from/to Gatwick as required.
    
    Leisure is probably easier as a small scale operation, since lower frequencies (e.g. once or twice weekly) can work, but even for Virgin it represents a very small proportion of their revenue stream and as such unlikely to be of much interest to BA unless they think they could use it as a basis to build a sustainable and profitable operation somewhere new.
    
    One issue of course is that doing so is likely to take connecting passengers away from their London based operations which via damage their viability and profitability as well.
    - Mark says:
      
      24 Dec24 December 13:18
      
      may damage even…..
Kiran says:

24 Dec24 December 08:59

B787 for Hyderabad is a bit of a surprise although I am happy because it is my home town. Unfortunately, I will be missing the March 30th start by about 2 weeks. Will be flying from HYD-LHR around the 15th. This route always has a lot of availability in ClubWorld if anyone is interested. I would have thought that other destinations like San Diego would get first preference for 787. They use similar aircraft on both San Diego and Hyderabad routes at present I think.