British Airways has confirmed that it will wipe Beijing from its global route map because the time and cost involved in flying to the Chinese capital while avoiding Russian airspace has made the destination commercially untenable.
A British Airways spokesperson said that the airline intends to “pause” its non-stop Beijing service on October 26, which comes at the end of the airline industry’s official summer season.
With Russian airspace likely to remain shuttered for some time, British Airways says that it has no intention of returning to Beijing until November 2025 at the earliest, although a spokesperson noted that the airline would be keeping its schedule “under review.”
British Airways will continue operating flights to Hong Kong and Shanghai despite facing the same issues as the Beijing service, although BA recently confirmed that it was slashing its non-stop Hong Kong services to just one daily service rather than the double-daily flight it has operated up to now.
The news comes just months after British Airways announced that it intended to double the number of local China-based cabin crew on routes between Beijing and Shanghai, and London Heathrow.
British Airways did not confirm the fate of its Beijing-based cabin crew, who had already been made redundant for three years when pandemic-era travel restrictions forced BA to cancel commercial passenger services to the Chinese capital.
Following the pandemic, British Airways only returned to Beijing in June 2023, although, like other Western carriers, it has struggled to compete with Chinese airlines that can continue using Russian airspace on flights to Europe and beyond.
Last month, Virgin Atlantic said it was ditching Shanghai as its last remaining destination in the region due to the closure of Russian airspace, which made operating flights to the country so expensive.
Explaining the decision, Virgin Atlantic said the extra time and fuel required to fly to Shanghai was adding “significant challenges and complexities,” which no longer made it a viable commercial destination.
Just like British Airways, a spokesperson for Virgin Atlantic said that it was merely suspending its Shanghai and intended to return once Russian airspace reopened.
