British Airways received the first of their magnificent Airbus A380s in July 2013
With just 12 aircraft purchased, British Airways always planned to contract out the A380 heavy maintenance - initially they were sent to Singapore, and later the contract was moved to Manila
The first of the maintenance flights started in June 2015 - these first checks were usually completed within a month
The second round of maintenance downtime started in March 2017 - and these trips were usually over two months, although the three newest aircraft were completed within a month
The third round of maintenance started in October 2018 - and these sessions usually took closer to three months, although the three newest aircraft were completed within two months
The fourth round of maintenance started in September 2021 - and aircraft were generally out in Manila over two months
The full list of movements can be found in this FlyerTalk forum thread
The question arose recently as to how many of the SuperJumbos were usually available to British Airways for revenue flights - so I decided to do some number crunching
This analysis looks at how many aircraft were available for the full month - often BA would send out one aircraft to Manila and a few days later bring back another - in this analysis that counts as two aircraft being unavailable during the month
When an aircraft left on the last day of a month or returned on the first day of a month, I've ignored it to keep the analysis relatively straightforward
This table shows that over the course of seven and a half years that British Airways have had on average 10.9 aircraft available for the whole month
Since the second round of maintenance checks started in March 2017 - in the following three and a half years (43 months) there were just five months where all 12 aircraft were available
With all the comings and goings it's sometimes easy to lose sight of the bigger picture - hopefully this gives an insight into the availability of A380s in the British Airways schedule
