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British Airways has still not quite restored all of the routes it operated before the pandemic (primarily because it still hasn’t replaced all of the 747s that it retired), but a recent update from the airline has told us that two of its Asia routes will be returning before the end of the year.
BA’s route to Malaysia
British Airways has confirmed that it will restore its service between London Heathrow and Kuala Lumpur from 10 November 2024 and as things stand, this is the planned schedule:
BA33 LHR 20:45 – 17:30+1 day KUL (Daily)
BA34 KUL 23:15 – 05:20+1 day LHR (Daily)
The route will be operated by a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner which offers the following seating options:
- 8 First Class seats.
- 42 Business Class seats.
- 39 Premium Economy seats.
- 127 Economy Class seats.
This aircraft does not currently offer the airline’s new Club World Suite in the business Class cabin, so passengers should expect to be accommodated in the considerably older ying/yang Club World seats.
British Airways is currently retrofitting its 787-8 with the new Club Suite canin and the 787-9s are scheduled to be upgraded next, but given the pace at which BA does things, no one should be pinning their hopes on seeing an improved Business Class product on this route until deep into 2025.
Note: Aeroroutes indicates that this service last operated in February 2022, but think we last saw it operating in February/March 2020.
BA heads back to Bangkok
British Airways will restart its London – Bangkok route from 28 October 2024, but unlike the Kuala Lumpur route, this service will look different to how it looked before the pandemic.
Firstly, this route will operate just 3x/week instead of daily. Secondly (and this is the big change), this route will operate out of Gatwick and not Heathrow.
This is what the planned schedule currently looks like:
BA2231 LGW 21:00 – 15:55+1 day BKK (Mon, Thu, & Sat)
BA2230 BKK 22:55 – 05:30+1 day LGW (Tue, Fri, & Sun)
British Airways is set to operate the route with an 777-200ER aircraft which features the old Business Class product and not the newer Club Suite.
These are the seating options that are available:
- 32 Business Class seats.
- 48 Premium Economy seats.
- 252 Economy Class seats.
This aircraft does not offer a First Class cabin.
British Airways has indicated that it won’t be retrofitting any of its Gatwick-based aircraft with the Club Suite product, so anyone booking a Business Class fare on this route should be aware that they will definitely be flying in one of the more antiquated Business Class cabins offered by the major airlines.
Bottom line
British Airways has announced that it will be restarting its routes to Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok in October/November 2024 and because these flights were only loaded in to the booking systems in the early hours of yesterday morning, there is still a lot of award space available for anyone with a healthy Avios balance (at the time of writing, most dates through to the end of the booking schedule are still showing at least two Business Class and two Premium Economy awards available).
