British Airways has announced a temporary halt to its Beijing flights, with services suspended from October 2024 until at least November 2025.
The airline will continue to serve Shanghai and Hong Kong, but the ongoing restrictions on European carriers entering Russian airspace have complicated routes to China, now taking several hours longer.
This follows Russia‘s ban on British carriers in February 2022 as a tit-for-tat response to the UK’s sanctions involving Russia‘s Aeroflot due to the conflict in Ukraine.
A British Airways spokesperson stated: “We will be pausing our route to Beijing from October 26, 2024, and we’re contacting any affected customers with rebooking options or to offer them a full refund.
“We continue to operate daily flights to Shanghai and Hong Kong.”
The Beijing route had only restarted in June 2023 after a three-year break caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, previously hailed by the airline as “one of our most important routes”.
No specific reason was given for this suspension. The move is part of a broader trend of Western airlines avoiding Russian airspace, impacting their operational costs and logistics.
The influential business travel outlet Head for Points shed light on British Airways’ strategic move, highlighting: “Why bother when you can send the same plane to the US instead, where demand for premium cabins remains sky-high?”
They also pointed out that: “It is also well publicised that Chinese tourism has not yet returned en masse post-pandemic,” reports the Mirror.
The route change came as Virgin Atlantic also recently confirmed the cessation of its own Shanghai route in October.