British Airways Begins Portland Boeing 787 Flights After A 2-Year Delay

British Airways

IATA/ICAO Code:

BA/BAW

Airline Type:

Full Service Carrier

Hub(s):

London Heathrow Airport, London Gatwick Airport

Year Founded:

1974

Alliance:

oneworld

Airline Group:

IAG

CEO:

Sean Doyle

Country:

United Kingdom

Today is the day. After a long delay, British Airways takes off from London Heathrow to Portland on June 3rd, the day of writing. BA also relaunches Pittsburgh on the same day, contributing to the oneworld carrier serving 26 US destinations this summer.

British Airways begins London to Portland

Originally announced in December 2019, Portland was set to begin on June 1st, 2020, but the pandemic put paid to that. Now the route is finally happening. The UK carrier has a 5x weekly service, with all flights using 214-seat B787-8s. It is one of the multiple new Europe-US services that commenced around the start of June 2022. The schedule is as follows, with all timings local:

Heathrow to Portland: BA267, 15:10-16:49 (9h 39m block time), Tuesdays, Sundays
Heathrow to Portland: BA267, 15:15-17:05 (9h 50m block time), Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays
Portland to Heathrow: BA266, 18:55-12:20+1 (9h 25m), 5x weekly

BA267 is en route to Portland. It is using G-ZBJA, delivered in June 2013. The aircraft arrived from Chennai just before midday and took off to Oregon at 15:39. Image: Flightradar24.

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No more Delta

Of course, not starting during the pandemic was enormously sensible, not least because the US was effectively closed for many months. The delayed start also means that British Airways faces a less competitive environment, as Delta's summer-seasonal Portland-Heathrow service no longer runs. Delta launched it in May 2017, and it ended in September 2019.

According to the Department of Transportation's T-100 dataset, Delta carried 110,464 roundtrip passengers, for an average seat load factor (SLF) of 78.6%. In peak summer 2019 (S19), Delta had increased flights to 1x daily. As you'd expect, the extra capacity had a short-term knock-on impact on SLFs.

Photo: Anna Zvereva via Wikimedia Commons.

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Pittsburgh is back

British Airways inaugurated Pittsburgh on April 2nd, 2019, nearly a year before the impact of the pandemic really started to be felt. The last flight was on March 15th, 2020. It had 4x weekly flights by the Boeing 787-8, the same setup in 2022.

T-100 data shows that it carried 60,669 passengers, with a SLF of 72.8%. Booking data suggests that only around a third of passengers were point-to-point. The rest transited over Heathrow, especially to Düsseldorf, Rome, Chennai, Dubai, and Paris CDG.

The schedule is as follows, with all timings local:

Heathrow to Pittsburgh: BA171, 16:45-19:50, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Sundays
Pittsburgh to Heathrow: BA170, 21:50-10:10+1

BA's US network this summer. Image: GCMap.

Another Newark flight & the A380's return

On Monday, British Airways will add a daytime flight between London Heathrow and Newark Liberty International Airport. This third daily rotation is aimed specifically at business travelers with a 07:55 departure from Newark. Those traveling on the route will find that they have access to the latest British Airways business class seat, as the 1-2-1 Club Suite cabin will be on offer on the Boeing 777-200ER flights.

This summer will also see the Airbus A380 returning to more North American airports. Earlier this week British Airways resumed flights with the giant of the skies to Vancouver and Chicago. From July 1st, the A380 will also start flying to Dallas Fort Worth. This is a route that British Airways has not previously used the giant of the skies on. Commenting on its summer plans, British Airways' Director of Networks and Alliances, Niel Chernoff, remarked,

"This summer British Airways will be flying from 26 US cities to London and we’re very excited to be adding Portland to our list of transatlantic destinations. Not only are we the only airline to offer direct flights from Portland to London, but this new route also opens a wide variety of connections for our customers. Through Alaska Airlines, our oneworld partner, British Airways will offer codeshare connections to several destinations operated by Alaska Airlines from Portland."

Photo: Tom Boon / Simple Flying

That makes 26 US destinations

This summer, some 26 airports comprise BA's US network, including Nashville, which resumed in May. That's down from 27 in S19 when Charleston (South Carolina) and Fort Lauderdale were served. Both routes have ended, partly offset by the introduction of Portland. The British flag carrier has added seven US airports since 2015: San Jose (California; May 2016); New Orleans (March 2017); Oakland (March 2017); Fort Lauderdale (July 2017); Nashville (May 2018); Charleston (April 2019); Pittsburgh (April 2019); and now Portland (June 2022).

Fort Lauderdale and Oakland were defensive moves by the airline in response to Norwegian at Gatwick. Because Norwegian moved its Gatwick services from Fort Lauderdale to Miami and Oakland to San Francisco to achieve higher yields, British Airways ended Fort Lauderdale in October 2018 and Oakland in September 2019. Will you be flying long-haul with British Airways this summer? If so, where are you going? Let us know in the comments.