If you’ve booked a flight from London to Abu Dhabi with British Airways in 2025, you might want to double check your ticket as soon as possible.
That’s because the airline has just suspended its daily long-haul flight route from London Heathrow (LHR) to Abu Dhabi (AUH), following issues with its fleet of Boeing 787 Dreamliners.
The affected tickets will have been issued by December 17, 2024 and will be for flights traveling between March 30 and October 25, 2025.
Customers with tickets for the route in question will have two options when it comes to rebooking their trip.
The first option is to rebook on alternative flights operated by BA to Dubai, UAE (DXB).
Alternatively you can rebook with one of the partner airlines, such as Qatar Airways or Eithad – Qatar operates flights to Doha’s Hamad International Airport (DOH), while Eithad flies to Abu Dhabi (AUH).
Passengers will also be allowed to change their flight origins, swapping from London Heathrow Airport to London Gatwick if needed, and those with stopover changes can re-route via DOH or DXB.
But it’s worth noting that when rebooking, travel dates are restricted to being within 14 days of your original flight and the rebooking allowance covers the lowest available ticket in same cabin, or lower cabin.
Refunds are permitted for cancelled flights as per the standard conditions of carriage.
This isn’t the first time this BA route has been suspended. It was on hiatus for four years following the pandemic, and only started running again in April this year.
And BA has previously had to scrap several long-haul routes in 2024, halting Malaysia services and suspending journeys between London Gatwick and New York’s JFK, due to a shortage of replacement parts for the Rolls-Royce Trent engines that power the 787 Dreamliners.
Speaking about the route suspensions back in October, a BA spokesperson said: ‘We’re disappointed that we’ve had to make further changes to our schedule as we continue to experience delays to the delivery of engines and parts from Rolls-Royce – particularly in relation to the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines fitted to our 787 aircraft.
‘We’ve taken this action because we do not believe the issue will be solved quickly, and we want to offer our customers the certainty they deserve for their travel plans. We’ve apologised to those affected and are able to offer the vast majority a flight the same day with British Airways or one of our partner airlines.’
A Rolls-Royce spokesperson said: ‘The Trent 1000 is an important engine for our customers and our business. Its reliability is proven, with over 20 million in service flying hours since its entry into service in 2011.
‘We continue to work with all our customers to minimise the impact of the limited availability of spare parts. All of the companies in our industry are suffering from this.
‘Over the last 12 months we’ve introduced a number of initiatives to reduce the impact on our customers. Our Trent 1000 Task Force has been working at pace to deliver these improvements, drawing on our world-class engineering and technology capability. This Task Force brings together people from across our operations, supply chain, engineering, technology, safety and planning teams.
‘In addition, our first stage Durability Enhancement package for the Trent 1000 is in the final stages of certification. This is part of the £1bn we are investing in our products. It will make our engine highly competitive and will more than double engine time on wing.’
This comes after BA recently revealed its new luxurious first class suites for a different fleet of planes.
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The new first class suites, six years in the making, will be rolled out across the airline’s Airbus A380 aircraft and are expected to take to the skies in mid-2026. It will be the first update to BA’s first class offering since 2020, when the airline upgraded seats across several of its Boeing 777 fleet.
The suite features an ultra-wide 35.5-inch seat that transforms into a 79-inch long fully lie-flat bed – just one inch shorter than a typical queen-size mattress.
Other features include a multi-purpose ottoman, an ‘elegant’ stowable table, a 32-inch 4K TV screen, and adjustable mood lighting, including scenes such as ‘relax’, ‘dine’ and ‘cinema’.
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The seats can be adjusted at the touch of a button and are cocooned within a 60-inch curved wall for ‘ultimate privacy’.
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