British Airways has said that it will retire the entire fleet of Boeing 747. The decision was taken after a travel downturn caused by Covid pandemic.
After suffering from an hard travel decline, British Airways will retire all of its Boeing 747s. The British airline is the world’s largest operator of the jumbo jets.
British Airways retires entire Boeing 747 fleet
The Covid pandemic has strongly weakened the financial situations of the airlines across the world.
A British Airways spokesperson commented: “It is with great sadness that we can confirm we are proposing to retire our entire 747 fleet with immediate effect. It is unlikely our magnificent ‘queen of the skies’ will ever operate commercial services for British Airways again due to the downturn in travel caused by the Covid-19 global pandemic.”
The 747s was the 10% of BA‘s total fleet.
International Airlines Group (IAG), the company owning BA, planned to retire the fleet in 2024, but economic downturn accelerated it. At the moment, 500 747s are in service, of which 30 are actively flying passengers. More than 300 fly cargo and the remainder are in storage, according to Cirium.
Also, The Boeing 747 model is quite outdated, in fact is far less efficient than modern two engine models. So that, British Airways will use planes such as Boeing 787 Dreamliners and Airbus A350s. Those changes will help achieve zero carbon emission by 2050. Although Boeing’s 747 helped the democratization of global air travel in the 1970s, and reached its 50-year flying anniversary in February 2019. The Boeing company, based in US, concluded the production of the plane a year ago.
Virus outbreak has pushed reorganization of the airlines companies across the world so do with plane-makers and their suppliers. Hundreds of British Airways ground staff are at risk of dismissal as the airline slashes costs in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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