British Airways, the ‘on-off-on’ airline to the kingdom, will restart its operations to Bahrain tomorrow after pausing them amid tensions between the US and Iran.
The British flag carrier suddenly halted flights to Bahrain, home to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, last week, much to the despair of its long-suffering passengers.
“I’m a retired Brit visiting family in Bahrain, and my British Airways flight was cancelled twice with no explanation whatsoever,” Linda Houghton from the English town of Gateshead in Tyne and Wear, told the GDN. “The cancellation emails didn’t say why, and when we called the airline’s hotline, the agent didn’t seem to know either.
“They mentioned there were lots of people waiting, so we couldn’t stay on the line for long. In the end, it was only after my daughter-in-law had some very firm words that I was rebooked onto a Gulf Air flight.
“It’s been stressful and frankly quite disappointing.”
A spokesperson for British Airways said that it had temporarily paused flights as a precautionary measure and that it would monitor the situation in the region.
The move came as President Donald Trump threatened action over a violent crackdown by Iran’s government on protesters. Iran closed the airspace around Tehran for several hours last Wednesday.
BA also paused operations to Bahrain in June before Iran fired missiles at a base in Qatar. The strike last year forced Qatar and surrounding Gulf countries to close their airspace and created havoc for international airlines.
Its route to Bahrain has been operational for more than 90 years. Two years ago, the airline threatened to indefinitely axe all flights because of continuing problems with Rolls-Royce engines that power the airline’s Boeing 787 Dreamliner fleet but made a U-turn shortly after a GDN Media petition was launched and a series of high-level discussions took place.
Successful campaign
Instead British Airways later announced that it would offer a daily service from Heathrow to Bahrain, more than doubling the number of times it flew there per week, offering business and leisure travellers much more choice with dates when booking.
Plea to bosses
The service is returning to its normal scheduling at an opportune time as, coincidentally, the first scheduled commercial passenger flight between BA’s now-retired Concorde supersonic jet was from Heathrow to Bahrain in 1976, on January 21.
editor@gdnmedia.bh
&uuid=(email))