brunos

BA31/32 has been one of the few BA longhaul operating daily for quite a while.

Hong Kong had mostly zero community cases in the past two months (and a few imported cases from returning residents.). But the past few days have seen a surge in community cases.
Three pilots and a crew have recently tested positive.

While all incoming pax are tested at the airport and forced to strict quarantine (at home with wristbands and no exit whatever the reason, or in dedicated centers), airline and ship crews were exempted.
HK has decided to test all crews upon arrival. Apparently, if a member if positive, the whole crew will be quarantined.

Pilots have protested that it will make them lose two hours on arrival. UA and AA stated that it could create serious operational problems for them and postponed the resumption of their flights.The very light loads did help in reaching that decision. European airlines are asking for tests administered before departure from Europe rather than upon arrival. I wonder what will be the outcome for BA31/32. With rather light load, potential disruptions if crews test positive could mean stopping BA32/31.
On the other hand, I believe that longhaul airlines (with crew spending time at destination) should expect their crew to be systematically tested in the new normal. Some airlines already do.

I flew BA32 a few days ago. I was little worried by my fellow pax who originated in HK where there had been no community cases for the past three weeks, but worried about being infected by BA staff. After F sandwich service, I was astonished to see 7 or 8 FAs chatting maskless in the J galley.

brunos

Tu reply to my own post: most longhaul airlines flying into Hong Kong have adjusted their schedule or cancelled flights given the new requirement of testing crew before they can stay in Hong Kong for rest. EK has decided that crews will not stop in HKG. I read in the local press that the same crew would operate both outbound and inbound but that seems strange. QR is down to two weekly and completely changed the schedule of its flight, making it extremely difficult to connect from most European origins. KL decided to stop in BKK.
Still no news how BA is adjusting.

sxc

EK ever since the onset of Corona have made their crews do a 26 hour duty. They are not using two crews either - the same crew work the inbound and outbound flight. It’s unrelated to the new testing procedure for aircrew in Hong Kong. Terrible working conditions for the EK crew.

Flying Doctor

Wow! that is truly awful says someone who remembers Friday to Monday weekend shifts (any junior Dr who is old enough knows that this meant, a full 3 days and nights on the trot......) 26 hours on your feet non stop would be exhausting. The only things saving you would be hoping the flight is empty so less to do and that the passengers sleep most of the way (so not much in the way of demands!)
FD.

Flying Doctor

Nope - it still shows that the BA31/32 is going daily and that it is actually flying.....
Cannot imagine that there is much in the way of passengers given no foreigners allowed until September 18th. Must basically be for the cargo. I don't believe there is any serious demand when CX is only operating LHR HKG 5x/week.........
I wonder if anyone has seen this flight load and if there are more than about 25 people on it.......
FD.

sxc

The EK crew are allowed to rest in the F cabin mid flight IF there are no passengers. Otherwise they can only use the crew bunks.

Prospero

Still pretty brutal for the working crews.

As my memory serves, under normal circumstances BA crew who fly out on a Sunday evening will arrive into HKG on the Monday afternoon and return to London on the Wednesday late evening flight.

sxc

Yes the EK crew have terrible conditions. The concession to allow them to rest in the F cabin is laughable.

The question of the OP is what happens if one of the BA crew tests positive for coronavirus upon arrival in HK? Can that crew operate their return flight as scheduled? Are there any contingency plans?

brunos

Hong Kong has a lot of expats and foreign permanent residents. Lots of British for obvious historical reasons, but also French, Italians, ...
They have EU passports so not affected by travel restrictions except possibly quarantine. Lots of family or spouse and kids flying back to Europe and will return to HK by summer end or earlier.
I flew from HK on BA32 a week ago. 7 F pax. I did not venture into the rest of the plane, but few business pax. However the Y checking line at airport was quite long. And there were transit pax. I would guess at least half full in Y.

thijsseh

Whereas I would certainly not defend EK employment practices (especially for cabin crew), my information is that this is patently untrue.
There has been one instance of the same crew having to work both the inbound and outbound to HKG and that was when the HKG authorities changed the quarantine rules whilst the inbound was en route to HKG. There has been a similar single occurrence on a New Zealand bound flight.
At the moment certain destinations are flown with an additional turnaround crew, others (presumably based on corona infection rates) are 'back to normal' where crew go into a hotel (although they are asked to stay in their room).

Sigwx

As I understand it EK crews night stop in an airport based hotel. Some airlines/countries have mandated room quarantine for entire crews during their stay, often with zero provision of food at certain stations for some airlines. One ME airline’s flight crew manger operating a trip for ‘recency’ has been reprimanded in Germany for leaving their room.

We have our own procedures that are approved by the HKG authorities and we get temp checked as part of these procedures on arrival at crew report. There are various other layers to this but I won’t divulge them other than to say preparing for a trip these days is far more time consuming than in the past. Regardless of the load factor for passengers, cargo has been a big driver of whether or not to operate certain long hauls over the past months so I doubt the 31/32 will be suspended anytime soon.

A P Yu

BA have mandated room quarantine for crews at some destinations. To enforce it you don’t even get a room key to get into your room again.

if the new rules affect the Hkg rotation too much the rotation will probably switch to a cargo only operation operated by two crews (one resting on one sector and operating the other straight back) as so many BA cargo ops have been operating since March

sxc

My information is direct from EK crew: all Asia destinations except Japan are currently operated as turnarounds. SIN, MNL, TPE, HKG included. There are occasionally layovers but at the moment, it’s turnaround as a standard.

Flying Doctor

That is higher than I would have expected and I guess the BA service is currently daily which CX is not (though I think they are increasing to daily LHR-HKG soon).......
However, if things get locked down a bit more and cases are on the rise again I think we can expect the BA31/32 to drop from daily unless it really is just covered in terms of cost from the cargo perspective......
FD.

World Traveller Fuss

If loads are light or sears are blocked, I’d imagine this is how passenger service could be operated too?