British Airways will reduce its flight schedule to the Middle East when services resume in July, following the suspension of routes due to the Iran war. The airline plans to use the freed-up aircraft to operate more direct flights to India and Kenya.
Services to Riyadh are set to resume in mid-May, while flights to Dubai, Doha and Tel Aviv will restart on 1 July. However, BA will cut its Dubai flights from three to one daily, and reduce services to Doha, Tel Aviv and Riyadh from two to one daily. Jeddah in Saudi Arabia will be dropped permanently from 24 April, and flights to Bahrain and Amman are paused until 25 October.
The airline said: “Due to the ongoing situation in the Middle East, we have made further changes to our flying schedule to provide greater clarity for our customers. We’re keeping the situation under constant review and are directly in touch with affected customers to offer them a range of options.”
Since the war began, BA has helped thousands of customers return home, operated relief flights, and added extra capacity on key long-haul routes. “We will continue to assess and introduce further flying where possible,” it added.
Meanwhile, from 1 June, BA will deploy larger aircraft on its Delhi and Hyderabad routes, and add extra daily flights to Bengaluru in India and Nairobi in Kenya over the summer until late October. Additional flights to Delhi and Mumbai are also planned, in routing decisions first reported by the Financial Times.
