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There are many media outlets expressing surprise as to why British Airways has decided to suspend all flights to PKX-Beijing, China effective 27Oct just a couple of weeks after Virgin Atlantic announced similar suspension for its own Shanghai flights from London Heathrow.
The main reasons are three fold:
i. Incremental cost of avoiding over-flying Russian airspace. For example, for BA it takes 13 hours 20 minutes to fly PKX-LHR versus 11 hours 05 minutes only for Air China to operate PEK-LHR i.e. a saving of 2 hours 15 minutes one way which is huge in terms of operating costs! On the return sector from London to Beijing, its a bit less but overall the incremental time for a round trip BA flight is 3 hours 45 minutes versus a Chinese carrier.
ii. Capacity dumping into the London market by Chinese carriers. Air China flies double daily to Heathrow + daily to Gatwick from Beijing offering cheap fares and a decent on board product + a faster flight + optional connections via PVG too. More than enough nonstop capacity on offer on PEK-LON-PEK hence I feel a wise move by BA whom can better re-direct resources on better performing routes. They have increased Cape Town to triple daily nonstop from Heathrow effective Jan 2025 + increased LGW-Bangkok from 3 to 5 weekly.
Shanghai-London is in a similar boat in terms of excessive capacity being on offer with 5 daily nonstop flights on offer i.e. 2 daily MU-LHR + daily BA + daily CA PVG-LGW + daily MU PVG-LGW.
iii. Big drop in p2p demand between China and London post covid versus pre-covid.
In 2023, LON-PVG/PEK p2p demand versus 2019 was as follows:
LON-PEK-LON...259K in 2023 versus 468K in 2019 i.e. -45% drop
LON-PVG-LON....398K in 2023 versus 580K in 2019 i.e. -31% drop
