Originally Posted by Pilot37

The LGW replacement question is indeed an interesting one, but talk of migrating LHR based B777's to LGW is in reality a band-aid solution, BA fleet management will need to eventually decide what the replacement aircraft for LGW is and order a sufficient number to replace the entire B777 LGW based fleet.

At present the G-VIIx fleet at Gatwick are the following ages:

G-VIIO - 25.6yrs old
G-VIIP - 25.5yrs old
G-VIIR - 25.4yrs old
G-VIIT - 25.3yrs old
G-VIIU - 25.2yrs old
G-VIIX - 25yrs old

While all of the above will have had different Covid experiences and thus cycles and heavy maintenance checks will pop up at different times, realistically you are looking at that entire fleet coming to the end of their life within about 2yrs of each other (around 2028-2030)

The G-YMMx fleet is not much better

G-YMMA - 24.9yrs old
G-YMMB - 24.8yrs old
G-YMMC - 24.5yrs old
G-YMMD - 24.5yrs old
G-YMME - 24.3 yrs old
G-YMMF - 24.3 yrs old

So you are only about a year behind the VIIx series in terms of retirement of the YMMx LGW based fleet. Then attention turns to the LHR fleet that could be moved across:

Only 4 aircraft are significantly younger then the rest of the LHR fleet

G-YMMR / G-YMMS / G-YYMT and G-YMMU are all just over 15yrs old, but the next youngest B777 LHR based aircraft is 23yrs old, which is 26yrs old in 2027 when the B779 starts to arrive to replace the oldest B777 aircraft (G-RAES & G-VIIA).
We may indeed see these 4 younger B777's moving to LGW, but they will become an 'orphan fleet' and so BA will ultimately have to bite the bullet and order new aircraft for LGW or move across another plane type (B789's?) which will require a complete cabin overhaul if they wish to stick with the high Y cabin configuration currently at LGW.

The point of the post is that the LHR migration of B777's is not a sure thing and BA will need to decide, if they keep long-haul flying from LGW, how they are going to do that beyond the B777.

Pilot37