I had the same experience explaining the regulation to an American friend who was on a tech cancellation on DL. They sent some half-offer which was travel credit and she couldn’t believe her luck. When I explained that she could have double the amount in cash, and provided her with the wording to get it, she reacted with extreme suspicion! To this day I doubt she pursued it.

I agree with most of what you say but not this - it's entirely foreseeable that a certain proportion of an airline's fleet will be under maintenance at any given time. They should also anticipate that maintenance will sometimes overrun due to unexpected defects, shortages of parts, insufficient manpower etc.

Furthermore there'll be a number of aircraft each day that encounter faults or incidents as described above which ground them. With a small fleet you need to therefore allow a healthy amount of slack in the schedules for all of the above, or else have sufficient contingency plans to accommodate pax.

Unfortunately BA seem to plan their A380 schedules on the assumption of a best case scenario, ignoring the possibility or likelihood of any of the above occurring. That's a commercial decision for which they can, and should, be held accountable.

I agreed with most of what surryson said - but I don't think the A380 problems in the past few weeks are down to Manila maintenance delays
XLEJ has only been in MNL for about 5 weeks - which is absolutely standard for the fourth heavy maintenance check
There has not been a reduction in aircraft availability (on the heavy maintenance side) in the past few weeks

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/brit...singapore.html

Fair points both of you. Good posts.

I wasn’t trying to attribute the most recent issues to the extension of the current aircraft in MNL. I guess I was trying to demonstrate another variable which I think is unfortunate and will probably rear its head over the next month or so. Yes I agree that there should be an element of contingency baked into heavy checks - and there is. My info is that the nature of the defect found on the aircraft that’s currently in MNL, has not been found on any of the other hulls and is not typical of A380 of this age.

My post was an attempt to be balanced. BA get a lot wrong with these hulls no doubt - none more so than the extremely operationally restrictive routes vs pilot rosters. They would argue that they don’t fly them particularly hard [if you consider the number of home base maintenance slots planned per week, over a season] but I definitely believe that they were badly overlooked during Covid and they continue to pay the price in terms of lack of spares, deferred defects etc,

I was on the BA 207 to Miami on G-XLEF on Friday. We all started boarding and were waiting on the jetty when we were told the temperature on the aircraft was 27 degrees and rising so it was not safe to board and they were sourcing an air conditioning unit.

We were offloaded and then had to board again picking up a delay of over 2 hours

BA knew the APU was U/S on G-XLEF but did not check the temperature during the morning and it was only the Captain arriving that caused some action to kick in.

There were many missed connections necessitating overnight hotel stays in Miami and lots of rerouting onto other carriers so this must have cost BA a fortune all for the sake of having a member of staff monitor the temperature during the morning plus lots of unhappy passengers.

sorry to hear that XLEJ is under the weather in Manila!
I wonder if the defect that they've found on XLEJ is related to being stored at DOH?
with XLEE being the only other DOH storage, hopefully the rest of the fleet won't suffer the same defect

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/brit...ir-planes.html

So based on a writeup on The Aviation Herald, it seems that the "smoke" was in fact fumes. But in this case it was a good dose of clean fun (along with headaches and dizziness) for all involved as the smell was reported to be laundry detergent.

Apparently after it landed in Boston it was noted that there were 5 pallets of laundry beads in the cargo hold.

https://avherald.com/h?article=51b01411&opt=0

You really couldn't make it up.

IAD (BA293/292) canceled again today, G-XLEL this time- which flew to BOS instead. Second Thursday in a row. If I'm scheduled on it next Thursday, how screwed am I?

I’m also on it next Thursday. Relocating with five suitcases…. 😬

BOS cancelled yesterday, so they probably couldn’t afford two cancellations in a row on that route.

Trying to ascertain any sort of pattern with the cancellations is pointless (I’ve been trying to do so myself for the BOS flight, with a booking coming up later this month, and there’s nothing discernible as a pattern in there).

I’m not very sympathetic to BA at this point. The A380s have been back for long enough - they need to advertise a schedule they can operate reliably.

The BA293/292 was reinstated onto the 350 fleet as BA1293/BA1292. Both BOS cancellation and IAD downgrade due to LEA being nightstopped in Singapore.

We're on the 380 Nov 1 LHR to SFO. It's a sad day when you need to take off a work day following your scheduled flight in case you are delayed!

I was on G-XLEF back from SIN on Wednesday last week. That was also a toasty boarding experience. Goodness knows how long the APU has been inop.

G-XLEI has just taken off from LHR operating BA57 to JNB - almost three hours late

it had been on the ground in LHR for 12 hours
after pushback - it taxied to the end of the runway - and sat there for 45 minutes

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/g-xlei

We may or we may not operate an A380 flight seems to be BA's mantra lately. Heads need to roll at BA. It's unacceptable. No more excuses.