A few people have had their BA flights changed to another operator in the last few days with MMB saying weirdly the flights are now operated by something called ‘BA mainline Prime.’ I’ve just done one of these so I thought I would share my (somewhat nerdy) experience.

Background: Avios flights, booked in CE, Barcelona to London. About five days before I was alerted to a seat change and received an email saying the flight was now being operated by Iberia. Still kept the BA flight number though.

Seat selection: normal, was able to change my seats back on MMB no problem.

OLCI: normal

Boarding pass: normal BA-style boarding pass.

Fast track, lounge access: normal.

Operating aircraft: Iberia A320

Crew: All Iberia

Announcements: Standard BA announcements, read with a bit of difficulty by CC, understandable as think it was their first day.

Service: Seemed normal to me, choice of two cold salads.

Champagne: Yes, Nicolas Feuillatte. Refills not proactively offered, but given on request.

All in all, a fairly standard euro business class experience.

One thing that was different was that we were delayed leaving Barcelona by about 25 minutes. I feel sure a BA pilot would have mentioned something, but there was no communication from the flight deck about why. Indeed nothing whatsoever from the flight deck until we had started our descent into Heathrow.

Oh and the usual 25 minute wait for a stand when we arrived.

In summary, if this happens to you there is no reason to do anything, though I believe if it does you can change your booking to any BA-operated flight within three days, effectively making it flexible, so that is a result.

Incidentally the previous evening I saw a BA 777 inbound operating one of the LHR-BCN flights, so clearly they are pulling out the stops to get people on their way.