British Airways (BA) has to have quietly removed their planned service increase to 3x/day on the highly competitive London Heathrow – Delhi route in Summer 2025 schedule.
BA will continue to operate 2 daily flights after 19APR25 albeit with small equipment.
BA143 LHR 1025 – 2330 DEL 788 D
BA142 DEL 0135 – 0645 LHR 788 D
BA257 LHR 1850 – 0805+1 DEL 788 D
BA256 DEL 1010 – 1515 LHR 788 D
As of today(12 NOV 24), schedule shows Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner deployed for both flights on this route for the Summer 2025 season. BA 787-8's are configured in a 3-class config with 35J+25W+154Y seats (Total: 214 seats).
BA257 is currently scheduled with a 3-class A350-1000 with 56J+56W+219Y config(Total 331 seats) whle BA142 is scheduled with a 4-class B787-9 with 8F+42J+39W+127Y config (Total 216 seats). Switching to the smaller 787-8 for both flights will mean a reduction in deployed seat inventory of 119 seats daily including elimination of F class capacity. The schedule is expected to again revert to A35K + B789 in the Winter 2025.
The DEL-LHR route is highly competitive with Air India+Vistara (AI) and Virgin Atlantic (VS) both competing for a slice of the market.
VS operates a single daily flight on the route with A350-1000 aircraft.
Air India is leading in terms of deployed capacity on the route with 4 flights a day 2 787-8 & 1 77W flight plus 1 787-9 flight operated on Vistara 787-9. I expected 1x 787-8 flight on the route to be cut in the Winter schedule to free up slots for the daily BLR-LHR service, but AI has since leased 7 slots from SAS for BLR service. They are going all out to maintain their brute-force dominance on the DEL-LHR route with the frequency.
Apart from LHR, Air India has recently opted to begin direct flights connecting London to other secondary Indian cities using London Gatwick (LGW) Airport. Air India has 21 flights/week connecting Ahmedabad (AMD), Amritsar(ATQ), Goa (GOI) and Kochi (COK) to London Gatwick using 256-seat 787-8 equipment (18J+238Y) all on sub-daily3x/4x/week frequency. The 3x/week BLR-LGW connection has now been upgraded to a daily BLR-LHR connection with 7x landing slots at LHR leased from SAS. This once again shows that BLR has been commanding highest yields outside of BOM/DEL markets.
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