BA’s Complicated Relationship with the Airbus A318

DALLAS — In 2009, British Airways (BA) began an all-business class Airbus A318 service between London City Airport (LCY) and New York’s JFK Airport. The Airline terminated this illusive service in 2020, a victim of the pandemic. 

This route is the glamorous side of the type’s relationship with BA, but the story starts a decade earlier. 

In this post, we aim to explain the history of the BA A318, shed light on how the plane almost became a much more integral part of the BA fleet than it did, and show you how the type’s actual career panned out.

The first Order

In the late 1990s, the BA route network differed significantly from today's. In addition to its hub at London Heathrow Airport (LHR), BA had regional hubs at Birmingham and Manchester. These hubs hosted smaller, approximately 100-seat aircraft like the Boeing 737-200. 

By the mid-to-late 1990s, these aircraft were beginning to show their age in terms of efficiency, avionics, cabin product, and age itself. They were rapidly becoming outdated, and in 1998, BA addressed this with an order for 188 Airbus narrowbody aircraft, consisting of the Airbus A319, A320, and A321, all mainly for their fleet at London Heathrow and Gatwick airports. 

This, therefore, left a gap in the market for aircraft that needed replacement in Manchester and Birmingham.

By August 1999, competition soon developed between Airbus, offering their A318, and Boeing, trying to push for their 717 to fill the gap. Initially, the 717 appeared to be the frontrunner owing to the 717’s faster delivery slots as soon as a year later, in 2000. By contrast, the A318 could be delivered by late 2002 at the earliest. 

The proposed sale of older Boeing 757s back to Boeing for intended use with DHL would at least partially finance the sale of these 717s. However, disagreements between BA and Boeing over the value of these 757s soon arose, and the talks stalled. 

In October 1999, BA placed an order with Airbus for 12 A318s, with options for a further 12. These 12 aircraft would be outfitted with 107 seats and powered by Pratt and Whitney PW6000 engine, beating out the A318’s other power plant, the CFM-56.

Deliveries would start in January 2003, and in the interim, BA would take on 20 Boeing 737-500s to pick up the shortfall between the retirement of the 737-200 and the completion of A318 deliveries. These additional 12 units brought the initial 1998 order up to 200 airbus narrowbodies.

Engine Problems

All was well until October 2001. Problems arose with the selected engine, the Pratt & Whitney PW6000, and its internal design. Precisely, the engine’s High-Pressure Compressor needed a redesign. 

The High-Pressure Compressor is the second main internal component of a jet engine. It compresses the air that enters the engine through the front fan blades, increasing its temperature by compressing it into a small space. The high-pressure compressor is located deep within the engine’s core, just before the ignition component, where air and fuel are mixed to produce thrust. 

Diagnostics concluded that the original engine design, which featured five sets of compressor blades, known as “stages,” was falling short of the initially promised thrust output and fuel consumption by approximately 6%. Pratt & Whitney outlined two possible solutions: an in-house fix or an outsourced compressor replacement.

The in-house solution required adding two additional stages to the compressor, improving efficiency but adding weight. The outsourcing solution was to source a six-stage compressor from MTU, a German supplier based in Munich. 

Both fixes were suggested to delay the introduction of the PW6000-equipped A318s by up to two years, pushing back BA’s fleet debut from January 2003 to 2005. By contrast, the tried and tested CFM-56 was due to debut on the A318 in Q3 of 2003 with Air France, over a year before the Pratt & Whitney power plant. 

Engine problems continued into 2002, and A318 customers began switching their engine suppliers from Pratt & Whitney to CFM. However, instead of switching, in April 2002, BA elected to reduce their order for 12 units to just six and cancel their 12 options. 

We must remember that while the A318 also had engine problems, this was during the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the subsequent travel downturn had dramatically soured the public’s appetite for flying. Without the A318, BA also reassigned its London-based Avro RJs to its regional bases. In return for these six lost A318s, BA would gain four Airbus A321s, claiming they “need larger aircraft in the London market.” 

In December 2002, the remaining order for six A318s and three A319s was canceled in exchange for six more A321s for use on “higher density routes from London Heathrow Airport.”

So, the A318 nearly became a much more important player in the BA fleet. However, the A318 famously served with BA. This is where we enter more familiar territory.

A New Beginning

After five years of being absent from BA management's thoughts, the A318 was suddenly thrust into the spotlight. In February 2008, it was announced that BA would again order the A318, but this time, only two examples.

With a 32-seat, all-business class configuration, these two aircraft would plow their trade, flying twice daily between LCY and JFK. This provided a niche and quick link between the cities’ financial centers, Canary Wharf and Wall Street.

The service’s selling points were numerous. First and foremost was the A318’s size and flexibility. Unlike the 747s, 777s, and A340s that flew this route into LHR and Gatwick Airport (LGW), the A318 could be loaded and offloaded considerably more quickly. With only 32 seats, compared to the 350 or more seats the competition offered, the A318 gave passengers a feeling of exclusivity. This also provided a shorter terminal waiting time, allowing the plane to depart faster.

London City Airport was also a selling point for the service. The airport links directly to Canary Wharf and the City of London using the Docklands Light Railway. As the crow flies, it is only 2.5 miles away, allowing passengers to travel between Canary Wharf and the airport in as little as 17 minutes and to the City of London in around half an hour.

The London City Airport experience was also optimized for speed. Speedy boarding was standard on these flights, allowing passengers to check in as little as 20 minutes before departure. This meant passengers could go from Canary Wharf to airborne in less than an hour.

It was soon realized that the outbound flight would require a fuel stop somewhere with a longer runway due to weight restrictions at London City Airport banning the A318 from taking off with enough fuel to reach JFK in one go. This inadvertently influenced the service’s favor, with Shannon, Ireland, being selected. 

Shannon is the closest European airport to the U.S. on the route and one of the few airports with American passenger pre-clearance. This meant passengers could have their passports stamped before landing in New York, saving hours after landing while queuing at customs at JFK, as it would be considered a domestic flight.

The exclusivity did not stop onboard the plane. The cabin would feature a business class seat unique to BA’s A318s, laid out in a 2-2 configuration. It would also feature a portable inflight entertainment tablet and BA’s pioneering “OnAir” system, which allows internet connectivity and texting in flight.

BA never had a tough time marketing this service on the initial run before operations began. It was also revealed that New York was the airport’s most in-demand unserved route at the time; therefore, it was clear that services would not start flying empty.

A318 Delivery

British Airways received its first A318, G-EUNA, on August 29, 2009. It flew from Airbus’s factory at Hamburg Finkenwerder Airport (XFW) to LGW and arrived with a pre-approved ETOPS 180 rating. 

Flight testing and crew training began almost immediately. Crews needed to be familiar with LCY’s steeper approach angle, 5.5 degrees, compared to the standard 3.3 degrees. Training was conducted at RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire, far away from prying eyes in London.

British Airways kept various details of this service, such as the cabin, very hidden until the first flight, showing the importance of this new flagship service.

Operations Commence

The British flag carrier inaugurated this service on September 29, 2009, departing London City under the new flagship with the callsign BA001, previously used on Concorde’s services to New York. The passengers received the flight and onboard service very well, and they felt relieved that this service now existed. 

The then BA CEO, Willie Walsh, stated this on the matter: “For the first time, the City [of London] has a tailor-made premium service to New York on its doorstep offering the most productive possible use of time for business people travelling between the two great financial districts.”

The success of this initial service prompted BA to consider expanding it out of London to other markets, including Washington, D.C., Boston, and Dubai. LCY’s runway length was the main negating factor, which restricted the A318’s range. The stop in Shannon was acceptable to U.S.-bound passengers, allowing them to pre-clear customs. 

However, this would not be a luxury offered to any potential Dubai service, so a fuel stop with no customs incentive while on the ground made no commercial sense. Even the Shannon stop was not ideal. Willie Walsh commented, “We’d fly non-stop to JFK if we could,” so routes with stops would be largely undesirable.

British Airways reported an average load factor of 75% by February 2010.

Competition

The service was famed as an exclusive route, only served by BA; however, this wasn’t the case. With the development of the Bombardier CSeries program (later rebranded as the Airbus A220), the aircraft’s efficiency, through its clean sheet design and groundbreaking engines, began to garner interest from airlines to potentially operate it on long-haul services, such as LCY to New York nonstop.

While the regular Bombardier CS100’s range falls slightly short of the required distance in a standard configuration, the route in an all-business class layout was considered a requirement of the plane’s capabilities.

One airline interested in this capability was the UK start-up Odyssey Airlines. Odyssey proposed outfitting the CS100, later the A220-100, with 38 business-class seats and connecting London City with the American eastern seaboard and cities in the Middle East. 

Thus, Odyssey would offer an all-business-class premium product as its whole business model. It could outperform BA in terms of available seats and flight time while providing more aircraft on more routes.

This nearly came to fruition when the airline placed an order with Bombardier for 10 units in 2013. However, with the proposed start dates of 2014 and 2016 changing frequently, BA never faced direct competition on this route.

Decline

Such a niche service is always very fragile. It is always at the whim of passenger demand, market fluctuations, and operating costs, and soon enough, these factors catch up with BA’s unique service. 

In September 2016, it was revealed that BA would reduce its service from 11 flights a week to just six by removing BA003 and 004, the second daily rotation, from the flight schedule by October of that year. This would be achieved by retiring its second A318, G-EUNB. 

It was flown to Cambridge for storage and then transferred to the British charter specialist Titan Airways (ZT) in May 2017, where it spent the remainder of its career. This left G-EUNA to fly the service alone.

With only one aircraft on this service, scheduled and unscheduled maintenance and crew training would now threaten its reliability and frequency. Weeks of the year are blocked out for maintenance, and no substitute is available short of taking the traditional route through London’s other airports, Heathrow and Gatwick. This would make this flagship service much less convenient for its target market. 

British Airways also had some trouble maintaining the unique airliner. The remaining aircraft differed from BA’s other Airbus narrowbodies in several ways, including their unique seats, related mechanisms, and, most importantly, their engines.

Except for the sole A318, BA’s a320 family uses the IAE V2500 engine as its only power plant. However, this was never available on the A318. So, BA opted for the CFM-56 engine, which was the best engine for the type and easier to maintain than the previously mentioned Pratt and Whitney PW6000. However, it was still an anomaly in the BA fleet, with it having to be sent to Madrid for maintenance with Iberia, which proved costly and inconvenient.

In addition, LCY was losing ground to LHR regarding transit time to the city with the advent of the Crossrail project, later dubbed the “Elizabeth Line.” This project promised to link the city to Heathrow in only 40 minutes, meaning that LCY’s lead in this respect was now negligible.

The final nail in the coffin of this now legendary service was the COVID-19 pandemic, the effects of which gave BA the perfect excuse to cancel the route permanently. On March 11, 2020, BA announced that the route would be suspended, and G-EUNA would be flown to Madrid for storage.

This was quickly followed by a statement on the 31st of July that year outlining that the service would be permanently discontinued. This was an unfortunate time of emergency restructuring. 

At the time, BA already had most of its fleet mothballed at airports across the UK and Europe. In addition, this restructuring would also lead to suspending the firing of 36,000 employees and the retirement of their Boeing 747 fleet. It was apparent then that any drag on cash flow would not be tolerated.

Last Flight

G-EUNA’s last flight took place on the 17th of February 2021, leaving Madrid’s Barajas airport (MAD) in the early afternoon before flying northwest over the Atlantic, then turned east just south of Ireland, and flying just north of London as a ceremonial salute to its old home at London City.

It landed unceremoniously at Twente Airport (ENS) in the Netherlands, where it was scrapped.

The ZT sistership G-EUNB it too was scrapped not too long after BA’s example. After a short but distinguished career with Titan, during which it visited places as far afield as Saint Helena, Costa Rica, and Brazil, the plane was ferried to Athan Airport (DGX), near Cardiff, for scrapping on March 13, 2021.

Conclusion

While the A318 never fulfilled its intended initial role with BA, it was still integral to the airline’s prestige. It highlighted the airline’s boldness and willingness to pioneer rather than just follow the example of others.

However, it was arguably cut short in its life with BA, an unfortunate victim of the pandemic. It was removed swiftly, and no replacement was yet on the books, leaving any resurgence of this service in doubt.

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