British Airways has scrapped plans to operate a trio of Boeing 747s on domestic routes in commemoration of its 100th birthday.
As I wrote about on Monday, 747s suddenly popped into the schedule for the following six flights on August 25th:
- BA1326/1327 – London (LHR) – Newcastle (NCL) – London (LHR)
- BA1386/1391 – London (LHR) – Manchester (MAN) – London (LHR)
- BA1482/1487 – London (LHR) – Glasgow (GLA) – London (LHR)
August 25th is no coincidence: it is BA’s actual 100th birthday.
> Read More: British Airways Honors 747 Legacy With Retro Livery
But this morning, the flights have returned to a mix of A319s, A320s, and A321s:
Airline Geeks reports that an email went out to all customers informing them of the schedule change. Refunds were offered to all passengers who booked specifically to catch the 747-400.
What happened?
Airline Geeks site “sources” saying that British Airways could “not afford” to take three wide body aircraft off its longhaul schedule. These aircraft are fully utilized and additional Airbus A350-100 XWB will not be available in time to act as substitutes.
CONCLUSION
Although I was not planning on being on any of the special flights, I think it’s a shame that BA scrapped these historic flights. Hopefully BA has something even better in store for its actual 100th birthday.
> Read More: British Airways’ Stunning New 747 Paint Job
> Read More: The Union Of Four British Airways Heritage Liveries
image: British Airways
If British Airways REALLY wants to celebrate their 100th they’ll retrofit a number of Super VC-10 aircraft and use those instead!
I used to fly BOAC (the forerunner to British Air) and most of the time rode on their fantastic VC-10 aircraft to / from Nairobi, Kenya . . . from London, naturally!
It’s a shame they scrapped these flights, but here in the UK they were also facing a lot of criticism from environmental groups, amidst the ongoing protests over climate change, for using 747s domestically, which wasn’t helping at all. I suspect we saw fleet expansion logistics intersect with a desire to get rid of an unexpected PR problem… I do hope they think of something else special to celebrate their centenary.
It’s probably more to do with the environmentalists complaining about it.
I know I’m pretty much repeating the above, but there was a lot of outrage from environmentalists about it in the UK papers etc. Shame they caved in.
On another note, it’s not quite correct to say “August 25th is no coincidence: it is BA’s actual 100th birthday” since BA was founded in 1974, so it’s not even their 100th birthday this year, just the 100th year since one of their predecessors was founded.