nateinuk

Hi flyers, noticed that August 15th’s BA286 from SFO to LHR was canceled. Anyone have any insights?

We currently have booked BA286 for Friday, August 19th and then BA558 to Rome on Saturday so we can get on a cruise on Sunday afternoon. It’s tight, and a cancellation would definitely mess things up. Hoping to understand why Monday’s BA286 was canceled

thanks!

golfmad

ExpertFlyer reports that it was canceled "TECH" which is a very general way of saying that the aircraft was unserviceable. There's no reason to think it will affect your departure on 19th but you might want to look at backup options from other nearby airports in the event that you need to make alternative plans on the day.

Foofighter69

I’m watching the 388 rotations to SFO closely, as I fly on BA287 in a few days. Something odd happened today, the two LHR-SFO flights seemed to have been combined into one BA285 departure at 1500 (which is neither the BA285 or BA287 departure time this month). With that I think one of the two returns (BA286) took the hit. I wonder if a 388 went tech and they deliberately combined the 3-class BA285 with the 4-class BA287, as the BA285 operated as a 4-class (it appears) with a 14F 777-300ER.

The 388s seem to be having a terrible time at the moment. Seems like they are running with very little (or no) spare capacity, and one delay has a knock on to subsequent flights with no room for aircraft substitution at LHR to reset the delay. In the case of today’s 388 to SFO it clearly went very wrong?

olouie

Reaching BA in case of close in flight cancellations is a nightmare and SFO isnt well staffed to handle the flood of issues that happens. Its been a while but last time this happened to me it took hours to get assistance which meant a day or so of delays since there aren't a lot of same day one world options anymore :-(

golfmad

With a little bit of advance warning it should be possible to hop on an AA or AS flight to another location served by BA.

olouie

Yeah if they let you know the day before its usually ok. The morning of will depend on how long it takes to get ahold of BA. There is no one at the airport until a few hours before departure and sometimes the phone center can take longer than that to reach. The real issue comes if you are on an evening flight like this and dont find out until a few hours before departure because your options of connecting get very limited to get out the same day.

Beaulieu

Was on 286 tonight and when I woke up this morning I had an email just advising of a flight number change to 1284 - and to accept and check in again. They swapped it to a 77W.

285/284 was previously pre-cancelled today.

edit: spoke too soon, flight delayed overnight!

olouie

Get that comp claim filed :-)

MrMB

BA seem to be having real trouble with the A380s reliability at the moment, lack of any spare capacity in the fleet can't be helping things either.

fklein

I see that BA 286/287 are often delayed by an hour or so. Are these delays due to issues with getting the aircraft ready or are they delayed because it is waiting for incoming passengers from connecting flights?

olouie

Almost always aircraft prep / crew issues. Not a lot of ppl doing connections out of SFO these days.