BA and Virgin cancel hundreds of flights as engines await maintenance

Tens of thousands of British Airways and Virgin Atlantic customers are facing flight cancellations after fresh delays to engine maintenance on one of the most widely used long-haul plane models.
BA has been forced to pre-emptively cancel hundreds of flights to avoid last-minute disruption for passengers over long-running problems with the Rolls-Royce engines on its fleet of Boeing Dreamliner aircraft.
The airline announced this week that it would halt flights to Dallas next summer for the first time since the 1980s and suspended services to Bahrain and Kuwait, destinations that BA and its predecessor airlines have served for more than 60 years.
Virgin Atlantic is understood to be finalising cancellations of its own this weekend because of problems with the same Rolls-Royce engine.
Among the destinations set to be suspended are next summer’s launch of a route to Accra, Ghana, as well as delaying the return of flights to Tel Aviv. Sources said that no final decisions had been taken, however.
Air New Zealand and other international carriers have cancelled flights for the same reason.
Some 15 per cent of BA’s fleet of 41 Dreamliners are grounded as they await maintenance by Rolls-Royce engineers.
Virgin has a smaller fleet that includes 17 Dreamliners. One is grounded, though this is expected to double next year, sources said.
Rolls-Royce’s Trent 1000 engine has been plagued with engineering problems for a decade. They need regular servicing, which sees planes grounded for longer and is now causing a maintenance backlog.
Airlines have been able to shield customers from the fallout until recent months by using other aircraft. But this means that those planes are now due for maintenance because of the increased flying hours they are being put through.
“We’ve taken this action because we do not believe the issue will be solved quickly,” a BA spokesman said. Virgin Atlantic declined to comment.
Bosses at BA are said to be fuming with counterparts at Rolls-Royce, who said that shortages of spare parts for the engine were to blame for maintenance bottlenecks.
Sean Doyle, the BA chief executive and chairman, is believed to be in direct contact with Rolls-Royce’s boss Tufan Erginbilgiç demanding answers.
“It’s completely unacceptable that tens of thousands of our customers are having their travel plans cancelled because of the continuing failure of Rolls-Royce. They need to get their act together,” a BA insider said.
“We’re one of the biggest operators of the Trent 1000 engine in the world and we’re yet to see anything from them that gives us any confidence that they understand just how damaging this issue is for us.”
Rolls-Royce said that finding a solution was its “top priority”. A spokesman said: “As an organisation, we’re taking decisive action and moving quickly to prioritise the resources needed to reduce the impact.”
It has embedded 50 employees within suppliers to speed up delivery of spare parts, the company said.
A spokesman added: “Given the impact created by the current supply chain constraints, it’s one of our top priorities. We have created an internal Trent 1000 task force, drawing on our world-class engineering and technology capability. The task force brings together people from across our operations, supply chain, engineering, technology, safety and planning teams.”
Sources at BA claimed that Rolls-Royce was not moving quickly enough.
“We urgently need to see Rolls-Royce take ownership of this crisis and deliver an acceptable plan that includes mitigation, actions and a credible timeline that will allow us to map out our future flying schedule with confidence,” they said.The insider added: “Rolls-Royce needs to stop making excuses, blaming supply-chain issues and passing the impact on to airlines, and instead focus on giving us a credible and speedy solution to a problem of its own making.”
A spokesman for Rolls-Royce said: “These changes are already having a positive impact. So far this year, we’ve increased Trent 1000 supply chain output by a third, making more components available and minimising the time engines spend in our Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul centres.
“We know that demand will increase in the future. So, we have allocated additional investment this year to ensure we can meet that demand, creating some short-term surge capacity and allowing us to approximately double our [maintenance] capacity by 2030. This will ensure scheduled maintenance, such as that of the British Airways Trent 1000 fleet, can be conducted as efficiently as possible.”
A Virgin Atlantic spokesman said: “We have taken the difficult decision to delay the restart of our service to Tel Aviv into the winter 2025-26 season and our new service to Accra will also be delayed into the winter 2025-26 season.
“It’s been necessary to make these changes to our 2025 network due to supply chain uncertainty, including ongoing delays to the delivery of engines and parts from Rolls-Royce, specifically the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines fitted to our Boeing 787-9 aircraft.
“Our teams are working closely with our partners at Rolls-Royce on solutions to minimise disruption to our flying programme. We’d like to apologise to affected customers and will be in contact with them from Monday, November 11, to discuss their options, which include rebooking travel with an alternative carrier, moving to a different date or receiving a refund.”