Originally Posted by
Gold77
Look at tonight's [3 Aug] BA782. Scheduled departure 17:00, estimated departure 18:27, and my app says "We're very sorry this flight has been delayed because of a late arriving aircraft".
OK, so where is this inbound aircraft? It is BA547, arriving from Fiumicino. It indeed landed 42 minutes late. Problem, its scheduled arrival time was 16:55, so it cannot have been the aircraft that was originally intended to fly as BA782.
It could well be that the original aircraft was even more delayed, in which case the reason would be correct. But I cannot help wondering whether BA in fact covers its poor planning or lack of serviceable aircraft by the "late inbound" excuse (which in turn can be blamed on external factors such as weather or ATC, and is more acceptable by passengers)...
BA782 (LHR-ARN) is, at time of writing, due to be operated by G-EUXI. G-EUXI did indeed operate BA546/547 to FCO. However the aircraft was 45 minutes late leaving FCO, and in-fact only landed back at Heathrow at 17:34L. This then allows a fairly leisurely 1 hour turnaround before BA782's new departure time of 18:27L.
Source: FlightRadar24.
In this particular case the information they've given to you does indeed appear to be accurate. BA chop and change their scheduled aircraft throughout the day as delays occur, BA may have had another delay on the aircraft originally intended to operate BA782 and have swapped that to the current frame (G-EUXI) to keep the delay to a minimum.