British Airways – Changes To Long Haul Aircraft Scheduling (Check Your Bookings & Seat Assignments)

December 25, 2015

a group of airplanes with red and blue tail fin

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British Airways has made a lot of changes to the aircraft it’s planning to use on a number of international routes next year. If you’ve got British Airways long-haul bookings for next year you should take a look at this list to see if your routes are affected. If they are then make sure you check that your booking is still in place on BA.com and, if you have seat assignments, make sure you’re still sitting in seats you want…because they will have probably changed!

A big thank you to Airlineroute.net for highlighting this and apologies for taking a lot of this from their website – there’s not many ways you can rephrase “787-9 replaces 777-200“!

I’ve listed the routes out by destination and in alphabetical order so, hopefully, that should make them easier to search. Some changes are minor and some only affect a single day….but others are a lot more major than that:

Heathrow – Baltimore/Washington

One-off Boeing 787-8 operation scheduled for 15 May 2016 replacing a 767 aircraft.

This is one of the better aircraft swaps you could have. Business Class increases from 24 seats to 35 seats, Premium Economy goes up by one seat to 25 and economy class sees an increase from 141 to 154 seats.

You would have thought that would have opened up some award space but, sadly not.

Per ExpertFlyer (which now shows British Airways award space):

Heathrow – Calgary

A Boeing 787-9 replaces the Boeing 787-8 on the following dates:

7 May – 10 May / 14 May / 23 May – 3 Jun / 27 Jul – 15 Aug

This could be another good aircraft change because it sees the return of First Class on this route as well as an increase in Business Class capacity from 25 to 42 seats.

I can’t see any First Class award seats available yet but Business Class awards are readily available on these dates.

Heathrow – Delhi

BA257/256 will operate with a 4-class 777-200ER instead of a 787-9 Dreamliner on the following dates:

3 May – 9 May / 21 May / 23 May – 3 Jun / 27 Jul – 15 Aug

More First Class seats (8 to 14), more Business Class seats (42 to 48) and one more Premium Economy seat thanks to this aircraft change.

There are a few dates with good award availability (in both First and Business class) although I can’t be sure if the aircraft swap had much to do with this:

per ExpertFlyer:

Per BA.com

Heathrow – Newark

A Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner will replace the 777-200ER on BA 185/184 on the following dates:

BA185/184

4 Apr / 6 Apr / 13 Apr / 16 Apr / 20 Apr / 27 Apr / 5 May / 16 May / 30 May / 18 Jul

A Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner will replace the smaller 787-8 Dreamliner on BA 189/188 on the following dates:

BA189/188

2 Apr / 5 Apr / 11 Apr / 12 Apr / 19 Apr – 26 Apr (some exceptions)/ 30 Apr – 9 May (some exceptions) / 11 May – 18 May / 21 May – 2 Jul (some exceptions) / 3 Jul – 09 Jul (some exceptions) / 12 Jul – 30 Jul / Daily from 1 Aug

Wow they’ve screwed around with the aircraft on this route!

Put simply – the BA185/184 route gets less premium cabin availability while the BA189/188 route gets more.

BA is putting its Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners to work

Heathrow – Philadelphia

A Boeing 787-9 replaces the smaller 787-8 on BA067/066 on the following dates:

9 Apr / 18 Apr / 3 May / 4 May / 21 May / 4 Jul / 11 Jul / 25 Jul

A Boeing 787-9 replaces the 777-200 that currently operates as BA069/068 on the following dates:

1 May – 3 May

Heathrow – Rio de Janeiro

Between 26 Jul and 26 Aug a Boeing 777-300ER replaces the 777-200ER that flies the route daily.

Heathrow – Toronto

This change will please fans of the Upper Deck:

A Boeing 747-400 will replace the 777-200ER on average 4 – 8 times weekly, out of 14 weekly flights. Nothing more concrete has been released so keep an eye on your reservations.

In Addition

In addition to the changes out lined above, Airlineroute.net is reporting that a 4-class 747-400 with 14 First Class and 86 Business Class seats is scheduled to operate to the following destinations between 27 March and 29 October: