I'm sure they are trying to manage it as well as possible with planned servicing but my understanding - happy to be corrected - is that they could need to withdraw one without much notice :(

But there are others around these parts who are more knowledgeable about such matters, so hopefully they can confirm that or not.

I'm sorry, but how else would you know if something needs replacing or not? you can make an estimate of how many aircrafts, out of a fleet of 25, might be out of action and for how long, based on prior experience and what RR is telling you, but foresee that, I don't know, G-ZBKA will require both engines changed whilst G-ZBJB won't, without doing a boroscope, it's impossible.

The general yardstick is that BA will try and cancel as early as possible, barring obviously problems on the day.

I fly this route a lot and I have not been affected yet, which I know it's not much consolation at all if it happens to you. My colleague, who it did affect, got plenty of notice (weeks) and was re-routed to SFO which was a bit of a pain as he departed from SJC which meant he couldn't use his car to get to the airport. A re-route to SFO isn't the end of the world other than the immigration scrum if you don't have global entry, and a little extra commute time if you are actually heading into San Jose.

Because surely there would be an inspection of all potentially affected planes immediately, and any problems resolved then, or the aircraft halted until it could be resolved. In fact I thought that was why they grounded planes in January. I didn't expect them to be flying without even having been inspected. Unless you're saying they're all affected and the ongoing inspections are just risk management and they're pulling flights when the damage passes a certain threshold.


That's good to know, thanks. Just looking at the schedules that I can see they only appear as cancelled the day of flight (or maybe the day before, after I've looked). I'm less then three weeks away now, so perhaps I am ok... at least on the way out!

What about KUL..? I guess they would re-route via HKG or SIN for F Class or rebook to MH if they still have Dom P.

How far in advance does BA normally publish the cancellations on BA279/BA278?

thanks!

I wonder if they are paying out EU261 claims.

No.
The airlines do what is told to them by the Safety regulators, EASA in BA's case. EASA's latest Airworthiness Directive on the case is 2018-0086 and states the following. All bolding are mine.

How to find this issue?

What do airlines need to do?

This is valid for:

I don't have access to the RR NMSB, apologies, but I know the interval of inspections has been revised down. Hope this helps.

That really does sound like they should be able to pre-plan the cancellations to me. But never mind, they'll do what they do and we'll just have to wait and see about our flights.

The actions required in the Directive are based on cycles (one takeoff/landing is one cycle) and BA (or anyone else) cannot precisely predict aircraft cycles in the longer term. Consider if an aircraft has a (unpredictable) medical diversion and is very delayed on arrival at its destination. Because it diverted it now accumulated 2 cycles instead of the expected one to get to that destination. Meanwhile some other aircraft which was expected to rest overnight at LHR is quickly set up for use to cover the flight the first aircraft should be operating if it wasn't stuck at its destination due to crew rest requirements. The second aircraft also gets another cycle (or two cycles) that was not expected.

If they're both 787s and BA is already short of aircraft, then there might be a cancellation further in the future when the engine of one of those aircraft reaches its cycle limit in the Directive, the engine is taken off and can't be re-used on another aircraft until RR supply parts to fix it. BA might have to run their aircraft very close to the Directive's cycle limit in order not to have even more cancellations - no airline has a lot of spare aircraft to handle some of them going sick.

Looks like 279 is cancelled on Monday 30Apr:

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/...340Z/EGLL/KSJC

BA278 is cancelled too. Maybe they are choosing Mondays as last Monday both 278 and 279 were cancelled.

Strange that sulphidation is such a life limiting factor on those IP blades. You can generally work around with coatings and temperatures to avoid it.

in saying that Jet A1 from certain countries has high sulphur content. Running the engine in a temperature sweet spot for type 2 corrosion might be something the design guys didn't factor correctly.

Interestingly, the AD referenced above (AD) only goes into effect on 01May.

So this Trent 1000 mess may be only getting started....

And wont be sorted this year.