gerryod5

Have BA247 booked for March next year, does anyone know if you have to disembark in GRU during the stopover or can you stay on board?

Can I help you

When we last operated this routing transit passages could disembark or stay on board.

gerryod5

Great, thanks for the reply

HIDDY

Good to know they'll be back serving EZE.

Yes the last time I flew BA you stayed on. We were up front so no problem but it's a bit of a pain when you're in economy. Hence why I prefer using Iberia.

steveggetit

1. IB gives you BA Miles & Tier Points for their system flights. Good for us Brits mile collectors!
2, IB Business Service pre Covid was "excellente" and dialogue with crew good when you tried your Limited Spanish. i liked their Cold Soups....
3. Lounge in Madrid is in T4S which is where your UK flight usually connects thru. Lounge is good and in late Evening does a good Supper offering and excellent Tapas and Fino Sherry! On return plenty of Showers to refresh & wake up in.
4. Who wants to stop at GRU at 6am and have the thought of another 2 1/2 hrs leg.....
5. Another good alternative from the West Mids ( where I live ) or the UK regions is Air France. New Lounge in Paris is I hear great and its only a hop home after that. Havent tried KLM I'm afraid.
6. The JFK or Miami option is another alternative but seriously who wants to fly UA or AA these days. Poor Service and a long wait coming Home to UK. Sorry to be so confrontational but Service remains frankly an issue with US carriers in my view. Delta may be better though.

Just my 2 cents worth

Steve

gerryod5

Thanks for the input, but we have already booked the flight. The OH has some disability issues, so the less transit we have the better. We will be up front, so as we plan to stay on board it shouldn’t be too much of an inconvenience.

AF are not an option, personal reasons based on them never purchasing any of our products during my working life. I carry a grudge 😀

NicholasMAN

I was booked on the BA247 (LHR > EZE) on 6th January 2022, and have just received an email from BA saying that I've been switched to the (new) BA245 direct service departing LHR at 1805, arriving in EZE at 0500 (much earlier than pre-Covid timing of this service). The aircraft type remains an A350.

As yet I have not received any similar email for my return leg on BA246 on 18th January. Either this will follow soon, or the direct service doesn't yet operate all days.

NicholasMAN

As an addition to my previous post, I've done some checking on Skyscanner and it seems that BA have provided this additional service on 3 days only so far - ex-LHR on 4th, 6th and 8th Jan (returning 1435 on 5th, 7th and 9th) presumably due to demand / load factors.

I was lucky enough to book a reward seat as the cash price of my ticket today on BA.com is £7110!

I'm wondering if this is just the start, and if demand remains constant we'll hopefully see a return to regular separate flights to GRU and EZE.

Royalscot

Am sure the demand will return for EZE and direct flights will return on a regular basis, just hope they continue the A350 and not revert back the 3 class 777

Lovecraft

Same Here, I was on the 247 on Dec 1st, to be in the "inaugural" flight to EZE and to finally try the new Club Suites, and they changed it to the 245 nonstop to Buenos Aires. It's not a big deal, except for the times: an early evening departure from LHR, and a very early morning arrival at EZE (who wants to be in Buenos Aires at 5am?). Even more strange, the A350 will remain parked in EZE 9 hours until the return at 14:30.Of course it cannot return earlier because LHR would be closed, but that doesn't explain the LHR-EZE times. I wonder if the Argentine government has something to do, with their idea of "spacing" the arrivals (it's true that all European flights used to arrive between 7 and 9 am, and the queues at passport control and customs were crazy).

BA6501

Might be something to do with crew rest?

Lovecraft

I don't think so, they usually use a new crew on the inbound. And 9 hours is not enough time to rest for the same crew.

13901

What I'm hearing is that there are some Argentinian gov't limitations.

However, knowing how small the galley space is on the A350 I'd rather go via MAD on Iberia. Unless [my speculation] you really want to have a biscuit or something like that as a second service...[/my speculation]

ermis177

Is it that bad? I was under the impression that BA is offering a proper second meal to ultra long haul flights like EZE like most airlines? Do you get a light meal instead?!

13901

I should point out it's just my speculation.

BA's A350 have the tiniest galley space of all A350s around there. There's only one at the front and one at the very end and both are tiny, so much so that my A350 pilot friend was saying that the toilet upfront is borderline unusable during service. There's no mid galley and, based on what I can remember, no cross-aisle space in the whole of WT and WT+ unless you go to the back galley which is also smaller than other airlines'. I flew BA's A350 only once, to TLV, and service in WT+ was a mess.

Unless they have Mary Poppins-approved stowages it's going to be quite the challenge.

Edit to add:

I've created a bit of a comparison between A350-1000s thanks to the great AeroLOPA website from Prospero. I'm assuming, and I think I'm correct in making this assumption, that the plans in the website are accurate in terms of dimensions.

If you compare BA's (bottom) A35K with QR, VS or CX you notice a number of things:



1. The front galley has a toilet in a very unfortunate location. In terms of flow of work, it's what my Black Belt colleagues call "sandwiched between your testicles". Goes without saying that preparing meals with that in the way is a pain in the neck.
2. BA hasn't got a middle galley. The space there is minuscule; you cannot prepare meals there. Plus, two toilets in the way will generate traffic and people loitering in the only cross-aisle passage you have at "half-plane". Compare it with the space on CX or the QR version, which even features a small galley before the Economy section.
3. Aft of that galley, there's no cross-aisle passage. You need to get down to the very bottom.
4. The aft galley is tiny. All other airlines have a full galley down at the back, coupled with an "island" which I believe is used to 'stage' the meals or anyway to prep the trolleys. BA has a teeny tiny galley where the crew need to share space with two loos and their respective "customers". Imagine having five or six people working there. I've seen hovels in Kowloon's Walled City that were more spacious.
5. Loos. BA has 9, everyone else has 10.

Because of all of the above, if paying with my own money, to go to EZE I'll either fly to SCL and change or go Iberia.