Originally Posted by corporate-wage-slave

If you want chapter and verse - which I would not advise - I would look up "Trent turbine blades on 787s" on this forum or elsewhere. There simply are not spare 787s lolling around the back of Heathrow waiting for someone to whistle for them. And crew don't grow on trees either. I don't know the exact cause for this delay but I would suspect a technical fault, perhaps combined with the complex crew hours on that route, led to this long delay, and there wasn't the possibility of moving to another aircraft. On this sector it can - at the moment - only be a 787 service, unless they split it up into several jumps (which again poses working hour issues). So shoving in a spare 747 unfortunately wouldn't work either. But it would be nice to see BA's 747s back in SCL of course. Then there is the issue of night flights at Heathrow and getting clearance for arrival in SCL.

Past performance is no guide to future deliverables.