MattHedges

It's been 2 years since COVID and MYS has also opened its borders and restrictions lifted. When is BA going to resume direct flights. What is the hold up? Was the sector not profitable?

ItsWowStyle

Less and less focus on the SEA region because of competitors from the Gulf, same goes for Bangkok. I guess their Singapore route only holds up because of its connecting flight to Sydney.

mikeyfly

I don't think it was a hugely profitable route.... why serve KUL when you can serve yet another US city ?! cough Cincinnati cough

EuropeanPete

Not being able to fly over Russian airspace will be a factor.

SW7London

I'm still surprised BA serve SYD - surely there is better use of the frame and given the relatively low fares compared to locations a lot closer to London!

Colesmore

I guess it takes two planes to operate a daily service that they'd rather use elsewhere. It's also a route covered by 2 x daily MH services, plus 1 stop options from several UK ports with CX or QR so perhaps the market just isn't there for BA to fight with. If it came back I'd probably fly it, but only paying avios & 2-4-1..

Colesmore

I can't see anything less than £5500 return to Sydney all year, which doesn't seem particularly low compared to other locations. Where were you referring to?

Given their sending a 777 with 76J and 8F seats to Sydney every day, with apparently full cabins they must be doing something correctly. If this is short term pent up demand still or something longer remains to be seen.

mikeyfly

Relatively low fares are not on that route this year !

Cymro

Given that fares out of Australia are actually lower than out of London at the moment, for the first time ever, and lots of non OneWorld airlines are starting to offer deals from elsewhere in Europe, if not yet the UK, I suspect it's a short-term factor that everyone has factored into their longer-term expectations, if that makes sense, but I do wonder if there are signs of collapsing fares.

I'm not saying we'll ever see £1,800 Europe-Sydney business class fares again, but that we might get closer to their inflation-adjusted equivalents vs. five years ago.

bisonrav

I can't really see this. With 2 MH flights a day and Singapore well served and "as good as", I don't think this will be high on the priority list as a Far East Route.

xxxxx

People forget that KUL was a relatively new re-addition to the longhaul network, so even back when it re-started it was pretty low on the list.

I can only see BKK, KUL, ICN etc re-start when BA have the frames and they can fly over Russia again.

orbitmic

My understanding is that when BA decided to axe the KUL route, this was intended as a permanent decision, so I don't think that they were intending to reopen it any time soon, and if they ever do, that will effectively be a new route decision.

westmidlandsguy

There was an article in November 2021 in the Telegraph interviewing Sean Doyle and it spoke about Kuala Lumpur and other destinations citing they are "merely" suspended and wants BA to start growing its network again. This included Osaka, Abu Dhabi, Seoul and many more. Alas Bangkok wasn't mentioned. There also wasn't a date specified.


Here is the article if anyone cares to read:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/n...ck-golden-age/

13901

BA has a finite number of airplanes, crews and so on - especially now that there are no 747s and the replacement 78Xs, 35Ks haven't fully arrived yet. In this frame of mind, the airline will prioritise flying to those destinations where the return on invested capital is the highest. And, right now, a route like Pittsburgh, or Cincinnati, yields more than one to Osaka, Bangkok or KL. Plus they're shorter, so the same plane can fly 'more' passengers in the same length of time.

Unless there's less demand to fly to minor US destinations, or a dramatically large number of planes, crews, slots and so on, I doubt that a lot of these routes will come back. Plus, obviously, the Siberia overflight ban is going to be a long-standing impact.

clarkeysntfc

Do BA even have enough long haul aeroplanes to fly there given the 747 retirements haven't been fully replaced?