Originally Posted by
BA6501
Last week I believe, but I don't think they have flown passenger flights (or at all) since being retired over a year ago. Are you sure you didn't see an old livery 346 such as JLE?
It was 100% a 342. I don't remember the reg, but I was quite shocked to see it there. My personal thoughts was it was there for a charter flight rather than scheduled service since IB basically has flex capacity. Either that or they were giving it a proper sendoff or something since it sounds like the timelines match up.
I know they had been keeping them maintained to be able to provide hot swaps for equipment in case of MX issues.