Yet another BA 747 goes tech

BA is famed for its high quality and thorough maintenance programme, but there is only so much you can do to keep an aging fleet airworthy.

A quick review of the http://www.thebasource.com shows that there is rarely a day without incident on either a 747, 767 or 777.

The 747 is probably my favourite all time aircraft.
And I do have a bit of sympathy for BA. It’s sort of like looking after your faithful Labrador , that you’ve raised since he was a cute Andrex puppy, but sadly now his hind legs have gone and taking him for a walk has become a labour of love, if not a chore.

Sadly BA’s short sightedness in not ordering the 380 earlier is now catching up with them. It must be a hard life being a BeAn counter, seeing the cost of maintaining their 747 fleet, strip out the savings made by the 380 operation.

Of course, BA will hang on to their 747’s as long as they can because, I understand, they are owned outright and therefore, notwithstanding four engines and maintenance costs, they are still relatively cheap to operate compared to new aircraft.

Somehow I doubt the A380 will cease production, I think Airbus were just posturing. The market may be small but it’s still there and as saturation of hubs continues there will be no choice but to use it to maintain growth. Considering the relative size of it, it has done well in a recession.

I wonder too how long people will be prepared to put up with cramped conditions to get the cheapest fare, that worm may well turn too and the likes of Air Canada with 400+ seats on a 773 may be left with burned fingers. There is always a choice.

As for BA, well we all know they missed the boat on the A380 and while they might own their 744 fleet outright it does nothing for their reputation to have so many incidents with it. People will only put up with so much and a tech 744 plus the hassle of an LHR transfer and a disaffected crew may well make people look elsewhere the next time.

If I was Airbus Salesperson responsible for BA, I would see the current 747 issues as the perfect catalyst to be calling the airline and trying to do a deal for additional A380’s…….are the ex Skymark delivery slots not still vacant ?……..there is always a deal to be done and Airbus could do with the boost of further endorsement in their prestige product by a repeat order from one of the majors.

TominScotland – 24/12/2014 10:22 GMT

Your thinking is a little skewed. BA 747s are very expensive to operate, but are written down on the balance sheet, so they would be perfect as an asset that could be used infrequently, e.g. as back up aircraft for more efficient aircraft that encounter technical problems, or for one off charter flights etc.

You are confusing the trade off between running a new fleet with high ownership, but low operating costs (a typical loco strategy) with running an old fleet with low ownership, but high operating costs (plus a higher chance of tech problems and costs.)

BA is moving from the latter to the former model, at the moment, possibly one of the drivers for the cost containment approach that is so obvious to regular travellers.

I’m not a big 777 fan but from a capacity and cost efficiency perspective I’m surprised BA hasn’t just ordered more 777-300 and taken the small hit in terms of capacity reduction as per Cathay or many other airlines.

At LHR 747 users are now down to just Thai, Virgin, El Al and BA and in two years will probably be just BA – tells you something!