New SEZ route last flight of 2018
 

Bit of an odd one here.

Last night/ this morning, we called up Japan at midnight to book the return leg of our honeymoon flight (2-4-1) and there is no flight returning on the 28/10/18 despite there being a flight out to SEZ (from LHR) on the 27/10/18. The last flight back is down as Thursday 25th.

Are BA going to leave a plane in SEZ until the seasonal flights start again in 2019!?

Schedule indicates there’s a SEZ-LHR on the 28th

Yes, just rung up UK Office, and they confirm it should be flying but there is a problem with the system which is why no availability right now. Just told to keep on checking the website, as could be released anytime now :(

Daft question - it's not everyday are you checking the right day !?

Where are you seeing it?

It is indeed an odd one but I can't see the flight on the 28th on the online timetable or on expertflyer. I was trying to think of a parallel to check but are there any other summer seasonal flights that fly out overnight and therefore return on the 28th?

Yes, 28/10/18 is in 355 days :)

28 October 2018 is a Sunday. It is the last Sunday in October, and therefore it is the first day of the northern winter 2018/9 scheduling season.

This suggests that BA has not yet loaded flights for this route for that season, although there are other routes on which some winter 2018/9 flights have been loaded. The advice to keep looking seems to be sound.

Do you think this will be a couple of days max? I have to let the TA know asap if we need to reschedule hotels etc...

I just don't know. If it turns out that this will be the last rotation of the season, then BA simply has to file a single flight SEZ-LHR on 28 October, but I have no idea whether this has been missed out by accident or whether BA is thinking about other things in relation to this route.

Seems strange to me that SEZ won't continue into the winter, I thought that was high season?

Perhaps the "current" winder schedule in force from Oct 2018 is simply based on the current one.

The best weather and hence 'high season' is March to October, with Apr, May and Oct probably the best time overall.

I've just spent probably far too long looking for any other similar situations (schedule changes and missing rotations). But actually it's quite interesting looking for changes in the W18 timetable (which you can currently view up until 1Nov18). Not that this is really going to help the OP.

There's no sign of the extra 3x weekly rotation to PVG (alongside the daily rotation). Within that there's an outbound BA161 on 27Oct that lands 28Oct and would normally return as BA160 0040 on 29Oct (+/- an hour perhaps for the BST change) ... but there's no sign of it.

Elsewhere, it looks like YYC might be dropping to 2/3/4x weekly, and there's nothing showing for NBO, SJO, BNA or MSY. Though it may be too early for that to be totally reliable: BA may be giving themselves time to review the early yields on the newer routes and determine the winter timetable; likewise with SEZ.

pfft, that’s a pain regarding YYC if that turns out to be true

Actually, sorry to have concerned you. There appear to be daily flights continuing westbound, so it's probably just temporary that only a handful are showing eastbound.

Similarly there's a lonely LON-NBO on the 28Nov which would be odd if it was being dropped.

Ahh thanks!