Flights – British Airways (Gone Tech and Cancelled – Luxembourg to Heathrow T3)

This is the forlorn looking BA aircraft that should have operated route BA0417 from Luxembourg to London Heathrow T3 today. The flight was cancelled due to technical issues and customers rebooked onto other services as it can’t be fixed within the next few hours.

Being towed from the gate…. The aircraft is G-EUYG, an Airbus A320 which was brought into service in 2010 and has always been operated by British Airways.

The whole flight delay process was well managed by the airline and there were verbal announcements which matched the information being displayed on the app. The pilot came out after around 45 minutes to explain that an oil leak had been discovered on board en route and that engineers had gone to look at it to see if the aircraft could keep flying. The information that the pilot gave all tied in to what we had been told, so the communications seemed excellent all round.

Unfortunately, the engineers found that the oil leak was substantial and it couldn’t be fixed locally. Engineers from British Airways are flying over to Luxembourg to fix it later today or tomorrow and until then the aircraft will remain on the tarmac.

This is my first flight gone tech and I think I’m up to somewhere around 200 sectors flown over the last few years (with around 150 of them with BA). The British Airways app automatically booked me onto a later flight and I have returned to the lounge to spend most of the day waiting for the late evening flight back to Heathrow. On the bright side, the delay was of over two hours, was the fault of British Airways and so I have claimed compensation of €250 via the airline’s web-site.

Not entirely lovely, but I’d rather sit in the lounge all day than be flown on an aircraft with oil pouring out of it across the English Channel. And, incidentally, this is one positive element about the current weak pound as the compensation is delineated in euros……