BA’s aircraft order
BA B777-300 at the jetty
Boeing and British Airways announced last week at Farnborough that they have agreed a commitment for three 777-300ERs (Extended Range). British Airways will take the 777s on an operating lease with a leasing company.
British Airways is one of the world’s largest operators of the long-range B777s, operating 58 777-200ER and 777-300ER aircraft. They have recently started to refurbish older B777-200s at Gatwick with refreshed interiors and IFE although in economy this isn’t great news as they have increased the density to a very snug 10 across!
The 777-300ER can seat up to 386 passengers in a three-class configuration and has a maximum range of 7,930 nautical miles. Currently, BA operates these in a 4 class configuration with up to 299 passengers.
The new BA Club World seat is due next year on the airline’s first A350-1000 delivery so I would assume that the B777-300s would also have the new seats. I would expect to hear an announcement about the new Club World seat in the next couple of months. Everything that I have heard sounds promising but until we actually see the final product we only know a few facts. The seats will all have aisle access, they will have more storage space and privacy too. Other than that the rest remains to be seen!
A350-1000 at Farnborough air show
South Africa business class deals from £1581
Cape Town waterfront and Table mountain
Amsterdam is churning out some great value deals at the moment. Last week I talked about the Emirates Bangkok deal. I also mentioned the incredible BA deal from Amsterdam to Bangkok from just £1243. It wasn’t totally clear if you hadn’t read the whole article that the deal was in fact from Amsterdam. If you missed out because you couldn’t find it, you can find all the details here.
Amsterdam now has some good value fares to Cape Town and Johannesburg which are often both very expensive to get to from the UK (or most places in fact). These include some decent BA deals. Amsterdam is a handy place to start an ex EU trip due to multiple daily flights from the UK. These include plenty of choices from the UK regions if you aren’t worried about BA flights.
Here are some of the best deals:
- British Airways to Cape Town from £1581 only available 16 April to 31 May 2019
- British Airways to Johannesburg from £1581 available from October 2018 onwards
- Emirates to Cape Town from £1925 October 2018 onwards
- Emirates to Johannesburg from £1781 October 2018 onwards
The BA fares seem to be the usual semi flexible business class fares with a 60-day advance booking condition and a minimum stay of a Saturday night. They are non-refundable but changeable for a fee.
The Emirates flights have a 90-day advance purchase and minimum 5-day stay.
You can book the BA deals via the BA website here and Emirates deals here.
Qatar Maldives deal for £1622
Maldives
The Maldives is generally an expensive place to get to on a flight only deal. Prices from the UK start from around £2000 and that’s for an airline like Alitalia or Condor. If you want to fly oneworld you are looking at a lot more. Qatar sales have traditionally been the way around this on an ex EU fare. However, as we all know Qatar have gone from one extreme to another with the sales. Earlier this year there seemed to be a decent business class sale every other week but since then there has been virtually nothing. There is currently a sale from Croatia, most of which is quite expensive but there is a decent price to the Maldives. There are a couple of things to be aware of with this deal:
- The Croatia to Doha flights are on an A320 which according to google flights has the flatbeds you can see in this review. However, they also have an A320 with standard recliner seats to and it is hard to tell from the seat map which they are as both flights have the same 2-2 layout
- You can get to Zagreb with BA which is handy and prices in economy start from £86 return but there is only one flight a day.
- You would get 560 tier points for the round trip, 40 points away from BA Silver excluding positioning flights
- Sales Period: 16 July 2018 – 31 July 2018, Travel Period: 01 October 2018 – 31 March 2019, Blackout Period: 15 – 29 December 2018
You can find the latest prices on Qatar here.
I found the BA order at Farnborough little else than embarrassing tbh. While I appreciate there’s no point buying aircraft for the sake of it to have someone like BA order// lease 3 aircraft sounds pitiful. There’s also the fact that said aircraft are nothing more than replacements for current stock being retired ( a quick look on FT gives you the registrations of the three they are putting out to grass.)
It’s also not like they dont have aircraft that are now extremely old and very much showing their age. My aircraft for LGW-PUJ in Sept’ was recently changed from a 4 to a 3 class so fingers crossed it’ll be one of the refurbed ones and I plan to take a walk back from BC to check out the updated econ’ cabin to see what the densification looks and feels like.
Hi Clay. BA already have a number of aircraft on order to replace their B747s but they have been negotiating with both Airbus and Boeing for a while now so there may well be more announcements to come. They have 36 B747s and 3 B777s planned to retire by 2024 so they will have to order at least another 15 just to cover those so I suspect there is a lot going on behind the scenes currently. The older B777 200/300s are due to be refurbished that aren’t retiring though it won’t be complete until 2020. Personally I hope they order more A350 or B787s as I am not a fan of B777s at all. They did also hint that more A380s may be on the cards too.