Spare parts crisis squeezes BA flights - TTR Weekly

Oct 15, 2024

KUALA LUMPUR, 14 October 2024: British Airways has halted its ambitious plan to expand international services during the winter timetable from 28 October 2024 to 31 March 2025.

An immediate casualty is the highly anticipated daily flights from London Heathrow to Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, that were due to start on 10 November. The airline last flew the route in 2022.

The Boeing Dreamliner 787-900, scheduled to serve Kuala Lumpur, has a four-class configuration: eight first-class seats, 42 Club seats, 39 World Traveller Plus seats, and 127 World Traveller seats.

The UK Indepent’s travel correspondent Simon Calder first broke the news, claiming “around 200,000 prospective passengers had booked seats on the new service.” British Airways is culling services during the winter timetable, saying it has been hit by a shortage of Trent engines and spare parts from Roll Royce that triggered delays in the delivery of Boeing 787s and grounding aircraft that required spare parts. Five of the 40 Dreamliners in the airline’s fleet are grounded, waiting for engine spare parts from Rolls Royce.

Calder, in his popular travel column, said that in a “bid to reduce the number of short-notice cancellations, the airline is freeing up the equivalent of three long-haul, wide-bodied planes each day between November/December and March/April – by making long-notice cancellations.”

British Airways has not posted a list of the cancelled international flights, but if the spares crisis deepens, it might cancel its planned resumption of flights to Bangkok from its London Gatwick hub. It last flew the route to Bangkok in 2020.

The UK Financial Times reported the airline had cancelled one of its daily flights from London Gatwick to New York and one daily flight on the London Heathrow-Doha route, blaming the cancellations on a shortage of engine spare parts and delays in delivering Trent 1000 engines for its Boeing 787s

Will Bangkok flights suffer the same fate?

Three flights weekly were scheduled between the Thai capital and London Gatwick using a Boeing 777-200ER aircraft. Bangkok flights are scheduled three times weekly on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday, starting 28 October and ending the winter timetable in March 2025. TTRW requested more information on the Bangkok startup and possible flight cancellations.

Flight scheduleFlight BA2231 will depart from London Gatwick at 2100 and arrive in Bangkok Suvarnabhumi at 1555 plus one day.Flight BA2230 will depart Bangkok at 2255 and arrive in London Gatwick at 0530 plus one day.

The Boeing 777-200 ER has a three-class cabin configuration: 32 Club, 48 World Traveller Plus, and 252 World Traveller (economy).