British Airways has confirmed that it has reversed the decision to suspend flights to a Persian Gulf destination, which has historic and important business and defense links to the United Kingdom, following an international backlash.
Earlier this month, British Airways said it would indefinitely suspend flights to both Bahrain and Kuwait from the end of March 2025 due to continuing problems with the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines that power the airline’s Boeing 787 Dreamliner fleet.
British Airways explained that its flights to Bahrain were no longer commercially viable despite the fact that the British Royal Navy has a permanent base in Bahrain and the strong economic and trade ties between the UK and Bahrain.
The decision would have brought to an end a nearly 92-year history of British Airways and its precursor airlines serving Bahrain – until that is the airline performed a spectacular u-turn.
In a statement, British Airways said that it had been in “discussions with our partners in Bahrain to review all options and understand the future viability of the Bahrain route in particular.”
The airline says those discussions proved to be “successful,” and as a result, Britsh Airways will continue to service Bahrain throughout 2025.
The Kingdom will be served daily up to the end of March 2025 but will then drop to a three-times-per-week service from April through to the end of October 2025. At the beginning of the 2025 winter season, the service is then expected to transition back to a daily flight.
Flights to Kuwait will, however, still be axed at the start of the Summer 2025 season, and British Airways has not indicated if and when they might return.
British Airways has a cabin crew base in Bahrain, which was set to close as a result of the decision to suspend flights in the region, and it remains unclear whether BA will go ahead with making these crew members redundant.
It’s not only British Airways that has been impacted by ongoing serviceability issues with Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines, with Virgin Atlantic also curtailing some routes as a result of the continuing problems.
Last month, the BA slammed Rolls-Royce for the disruption, saying that it had made the engine manufacturer “aware of the impact its issues are having on our schedule and customers, and seek reassurance of a prompt and reliable solution.”
This was always all about the Trent 1000 problems creating a shortage of lift and never had anything to do with commercial viability except to the extent it involved the commercially best way to deal with having too few planes to fly to all routes. BA also ended Dallas, but all of these routes would come back as soon as the equipment problems were sorted . . . assuming they ever are.
It was also a handy way to get rid of the Bahrain base cabin crew.