LONDON – British Airways today announced dropping around 2000 scheduled routes from its operations with growing concerns over a new variant of concern “Omicron” and changes to the UK government’s travel regulations arising from it.

British Airways stated that this move has been implemented due to rising infection levels, plummeted demand for air travel, and stricter rules being implemented by the authorities and the governments.

Cirium, the flight data expert stated that, over past weeks, BA has slashed over 2000 flights from its scheduled operations up until March 2022.

The worst-hit month would be January 2022 with more than 1100 flights dropped from the schedule on a week-by-week basis, following 200 in February 2022, 243 in March 2022, and over 500 in December 2021, bringing a total to 2144 flights over the span of 4 months.

This move has affected both, domestic as well as transcontinental operations of British Airways with Glasgow, Belfast, and Birmingham accounting for 31 rotation cancellations.

London – Johannesburg and Cape Town flights have been dropped with 31 rotations following the UK government’s move to reimpose the red list category for South Africa.

On the flipside, BA has increased its rotations on London – Cairo route by 12 additional schedules and moved it to twice daily service instead of one.

Surprisingly, British Airways has added four additional rotations to its London Heathrow – Santiago de Chilé flight putting more offering to its holidaymakers.

Despite this move, British Airways still finds itself in a much better position than the previous year with February 2022 accounting 600% more promising than February 2021, with 18,800 flights planned across its network than merely 2,670 flights in February 2021.

With this news, we can say that the dark clouds of Omicron would be cleared off soon with British Airways finding itself in a better spot over the summer 2022 season and making its network flourish with its world class product offerings and attractive deals.