Peter Mugridge
Veteran Member
I've just had a BA Boeing 787-10, G-ZBLB, over my house on delivery from Charleston to Heathrow.
Source on Twitter tonight (@HeadForPoints) reporting that the BA 747 fleet has been confirmed as dead and buried to BA staff today.
Source on Twitter tonight (@HeadForPoints) reporting that the BA 747 fleet has been confirmed as dead and buried to BA staff today.
It is a shame their withdrawal has come earlier than planned and understandably without fanfare. I was driving the Hounslow to Heathrow rail replacement service a couple of weekends ago and noticed a load of them parked up, viewable from Envoy Avenue. A sad sight.
I nipped over to New York to buy some trainers in 2017. BA Babybus out to JFK and upstairs in a 747 on the way back. It was noisy and really rather warm up there, but a nice, unique experience. The noise was a bit of a bonus as it masked the sound of people snoring and in turn some decent headphones masked the noise of the engines!
BA Engineering's facility for A320 family aircraft is at GLA, which I presume is part of it.Also appears a number of Airbus A321 have moved to Glasgow, but not sure why they are going there.
British Airways has said it will retire all of its Boeing 747s as it suffers from the sharp travel downturn.
The UK airline is the world's largest operator of the jumbo jets, with 31 in the fleet.
"It is with great sadness that we can confirm we are proposing to retire our entire 747 fleet with immediate effect," a BA spokesman told the BBC.
Shame they won't (presumably) be doing some kind of farewell flights.
I think BA aircraft are also stored At Bournemouth (lots of spare taxiways which can be used for parking) and some have been flown to Kemble (where there are some aircraft dismantlers that recover valuable parts for use in other aircraft).
Also appears a number of Airbus A321 have moved to Glasgow, but not sure why they are going there.
Oh I am so glad I flew a 747 in January now!
Heathrow's going to be a strange place with no 747s around
Same, managed a return journey in Jan/Feb. Sad to see them go, although in all honesty they had become a bit tatty internally.
Same, managed a return journey in Jan/Feb. Sad to see them go, although in all honesty they had become a bit tatty internally.
Also remember BA stopped training and recency for 747 pilots last month, so we're already a fair way into the 90 day window for recency. It's entirely plausible they won't have any pilots with recent enough experience by the point they'd be willing to organize any farewell tour. I could potentially imagine them perhaps doing a flyover of several cities on the last aircraft's departure from Heathrow (to whatever destination, even if its circuitous), as that'll take much less to organize.Unfortunately it doesn't look like it'll be possible - although I know for a fact that there has been a viable flight plan on paper with them for the past year or so that has all the waypoints worked out for a 2 hour flight ( = 3 hours block time ) round the UK for just this purpose. It's even been designed to be "reversible" according to the wind direction on the day. It's something they were looking at, but even before the virus struck it wasn't intended to be until at least next year so the planning probably hasn't got to the stage where it could be arranged in a hurry.
Qantas just did three 747 farewells that all sold out in a matter of hours.
It looks like the only airline left in Europe that will fly the passenger 747 is going to be Lufthansa? At least they are one of the few operators with the newer 747-8 so there's a good chance of being able to fly one when things are more like they were prior to this year.
Shame they won't (presumably) be doing some kind of farewell flights.
.....Rather than hanging about for hours at LHR I decided to take the option of going from London City instead - and I can't believe my luck it's an Embraer 195
Takes me back to Flybe Days, although I seem to remember BA's are more advanced than Flybes were......
The last 747 flown by Qantas made its final flight today, and did something rather touching on the way out of Sydney...
View attachment 81106
BA CityFlyer mainly operate the Embraer 190, not the stretched 195.
Their 170 fleet has been gradually reduced down from 6 aircraft at the start of the shutdown in March, to just 2 remaining.
Nothing advanced over the Flybe a/c AFAIK.
In fact a third of the fleet is secondhand, with the latest batch of 5 having been previously operated by China Southern.
It's purely software (plus an associated switch to place the aircraft in steep approach mode). The BA aircraft have a few other differences, but none are essential for LCY.I was under the impression they had some sort of technical adaptation that enabled them to Land at London City, whereas Flybes Embraers did not.
The last 747 flown by Qantas made its final flight today, and did something rather touching on the way out of Sydney...
View attachment 81106