Originally Posted by
JW95
Morning all,
Does anyone know if BA plan on a fleet replacement for the LGW 777s? I know that these were all refurbished circa 2018, however, they are all well over 20 years old now, some of them being even older than some of the 774s were when they left the fleet. There have been numerous articles about BA in talks for 777 replacements, but these seem to centre mostly on a direct replacement for the 772s based at LHR, and not the LGW 777s. I feel that BA wouldn't wish to reduce seat capacity on the LGW fleet, having densified the 777s, so hard to imagine them ordering the A350-900 and/or 787-9. Perhaps ordering more A35K and configuring these in a leisure-heavy layout could work for them? VS have done something similar where half of their A350s have a leisure configuration - which were originally intended for LGW once the 744s left.
In the short-term, the G-YMM* frames at LHR will be moved down to LGW to replace the G-VII* frames there and provide expansion. This will only happen once BA have ordered the replacements for the G-YMM* series, currently they only have the replacements for the G-VII* series sorted.
In the long-term, I think new frames will have to be ordered as none of the planes except for the G-YMM* frames are suitable for Gatwick operations unless they get refurbished. If they do order new frames for the Gatwick fleet, my guess would be either the 787-9, A350-900 or A350-1000 as they would need the range for some routes such as MRU which cannot be covered by the 787-10.