British Airways’ fleet of 12 Airbus A380s has been experiencing a series of technical incidents in recent weeks.
The latest incident, on November 6, the A380 performing flight BA207, registered G-XLEC, took off from London-Heathrow for Miami at 11:24 a.m., instead of the initial scheduled time of 9:50 a.m.
About four minutes after the start of the flight, the superjumbo turned south, towards the Channel to probably dump fuel, before beginning its return to its point of departure.
The A380 G-XLEC in question, which was returned to service in June 2022, is not at its first fault. It had already had to be placed in maintenance on October 13 and 31, and on November 2, leading to the cancellation of flights scheduled with this aircraft.
In early October, another A380 returned from two and a half months of maintenance only to be taken out of service again the next day, after having only made two flights.
On October 26th, British Airways A380 G-XLEA was grounded after it dumped fuel and returned to Dallas-Fort Worth. The Flight BA192 experienced hydraulic issue.
According to FlightRadar24: “between July 1 and September 18, 2024, 3.94% of all British Airways A380 flights were cancelled or transferred to another aircraft .” That’s nearly one in 25 A380 flights.
The cause of these numerous incidents could be the prolonged storage of A380s during the Covid pandemic in Châteauroux in France, a place too humid compared to aircraft storage parks in Spain or the United States, according to Head for Points.
