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Welcome to London Air Travel’s Monday Briefing for the week beginning 25 July 2022.
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BA Starts Work On Its Winter Schedules
We’re starting to get a picture of BA’s winter schedules as it is running schedule updates for London Heathrow.
Headlines include Sydney being upgraded to a Boeing 777-300, as before the COVID-19 pandemic. There’s no sign of BA’s A380 returning to Singapore yet, but it should revert to twice daily.
A number of routes are subject to frequency reductions including Los Angeles, New Orleans and Seattle. Planned frequency increases on routes such as Dubai and Mumbai are postponed.
Some changes are only applied to the start of season. It is not immediately clear whether rolling cancellations will continue throughout the winter or there’ll be a schedule BA knows it can stick to. The latter is crucial for passenger confidence.
Full details of known changes are here which is continually updated.
On a related note, last week American Airlines said Boeing may resume 787 deliveries as soon as August. On the flip side, Heathrow painted a pessimistic picture of ground staff recruitment which seems to barely keeping up with staff attrition.
No Heathrow Express This Saturday
There will be no Heathrow Express services this Saturday due to industrial action by the train drivers union ASLEF.
Services will also be disrupted on Wednesday due to strike action by the RMT. As will Southern and Thameslink services to Gatwick. The Gatwick Express will also not run on Wednesday.
More details on the impact of the strike on travel to airports are here.
Archive Clips From BBC Rewind
The BBC celebrates its centenary this year. To mark this it has launched an online archive “BBC Rewind” featuring news reports from regional programmes.
There are quite a few vintage aviation stories including:
Flying on a Lockheed Tristar aircraft from London to Copenhagen, 1975.
BA’s Boeing 747 “City Of Birmingham” lands at Birmingham airport, 1980.
BA introduces its “Super Shuttle” service, 1983.
BA introduces the Boeing 757 on Shuttle services from Heathrow to Belfast, 1985.
The site has struggled a little since launch so there may be periodic bouts of downtime.
Also of interest this week:
A long read on Qantas’ operational woes in Australia and the risks to its reputation. “There is no one to talk to and when you go to work you are basically on your own. It’s like we’re running a virtual airline.” says one pilot. (ABC News)
“From Midcentury marvels to modern-day stress tests”. With some great archive images the $25 billion plan overhaul New York’s three main airports. This is, of course, a classically American approach to infrastructure investment. It celebrates private sector investment without spending public money to fix underlying problems like transport links. (New York Times)
Staying with US airports, how LAX came to be and was almost replaced by a new “superport” in Palmdale. (Los Angeles Times)
From the archives and a different era for gender equality: “These girls prefer travelling to marriage” The women applying to join Pan Am. (Sydney Morning Herald)
News from London Air Travel you may have missed:
Airportr expands it luggage collection service to Geneva. (London Air Travel)
BA’s closes its Amsterdam lounge. (London Air Travel)
Late post publication updates:
[Reserved for updates throughout the day]
Lufthansa ground staff represented by the trade union are strike from 03:45 Wednesday 27 July to 06:00 Thursday 28 July in a dispute over pay. (Lufthansa)
Talks between BA and its pilot union BALPA over pay are said to be at risk of leading to a ballot for industrial action. (The Telegraph)
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