You’re in a plane seat, awaiting take-off on a long-haul flight. You know where it’s going today, but what about tomorrow... and the day after?
Despite a popular misconception that planes stay on the same route going back and forth between, say, London and New York City – of course that can happen to a degree – they are usually rotated around an airline’s destinations.
British Airways has a fleet of more than 280 aircraft, and of those, 12 Airbus A380 superjumbos fly on key long-haul routes and offer a range of around 9,500 miles and capacity for up to 469 passengers.
One such double-decker aircraft is G-XLEG, which was delivered from the Airbus assembly factory in Toulouse, France, on September 11, 2014.
British Airways has a fleet of more than 280 aircraft (Bloomberg via Getty Images)Here, we’ve teamed with BA to compile a fascinating diary of G-XLEG’s flying schedule of around 56,500 miles and 108 hours and 16 minutes in the skies in one week in December.
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Over the week, the giant aircraft – constructed of aluminium alloys and carbon, glass-fibre and quartz-fibre composite materials – will typically operate each journey with 21-22 cabin crew and two or three flight deck crew, depending on the individual route.
As you might expect, before each flight there is passengers’ luggage and any cargo to be unloaded, plus the now-empty catering carts to be removed.
After a thorough clean of the cabins by 20 staff for one hour, the fresh meals and drinks, luggage and cargo are loaded, security checks are carried out and the crew boards ready to greet the passengers once again. It’s a well-practised routine.
Day 1 London to Los Angeles, California, USA
(time difference -8hrs)
G-XLEG operates flight numbers BA269 and BA268 again on her round trip from Heathrow’s Terminal 5 to LA’s LAX.
Powered by four mighty Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines, each producing up to 84,098lb of thrust, G-XLEG thunders down Heathrow’s Southern runway and climbs out of West London into the wild blue yonder on the outbound flight.
Heading across the Atlantic Ocean and North America, the trip clocks in at 10 hours 56 minutes; the route typically skirts the tip of Greenland, crosses a swathe of central Canada and heads down to LA over US western states such as North Dakota or Montana, Wyoming, Utah and Nevada or Arizona.
Later that day, the overnight return from Southern California – helped by tailwinds – is shorter at 9hrs 8mins.
- Journey distance: round trip of around 10,900 miles.
The planes undergo a thorough scrubbing (Cedar Communications/British Air)Day 2 London-Doha, Qatar
(+3hrs)
After landing from LA mid-afternoon, G-XLEG is set for overnight flight BA123 to the capital of the Middle East host nation of the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
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Once cleaned and loaded, it’s a nippy 6hrs 16mins to the Persian Gulf city’s award-winning Hamad International Airport hub, typically routing across Belgium, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Romania, the Black Sea, Turkey, Iraq and the Persian Gulf.
Day 3 Doha-London
The afternoon return from Doha is flight BA122, which clocks in at 7hrs 21mins.
- Journey distance: round trip of around 6,520 miles.
Day 4 London-Miami, Florida, USA
(-5hrs)
G-XLEG is heading back west across the Atlantic today, flying BA207 and BA206 on a round trip to The Magic City.
The route can either head out across Ireland and the ocean, or go more northerly and down the eastern seaboard of Canada and America.
On the latter, if you are by a window on the right-hand side of the plane and it’s a clear day, you may well get a superb view of New York City from 40,000ft!
On this outward trip the duration is 8hrs 34mins, while the return leg straight across the Atlantic to Cornwall is 8hrs 15mins.
- Journey distance: round trip of around 8,800 miles.
The view from the cockpit of an Airbus A380 (British Airways)Day 5 London-Miami, Florida, USA
(-5hrs)
And... repeat! G-XLEG is heading straight back to Miami, but takes 11 minutes longer to get there and seven minutes less to complete the return journey.
- Journey distance: as before, around 8,800 miles.
Day 6 London to Los Angeles, USA
(-8hrs)
Back on familiar jetlag territory, G-XLEG is flying BA269 and BA268 on a round trip to the sunny City of Angels.
While the outbound time is a quicker 10hrs 29mins, the hop back across The Pond from LAX is a little slower at 9hrs 35mins (more time to get some shuteye for the passengers!)
- Journey distance: again around 10,900 miles.
Day 7 London-Johannesburg, South Africa
(+2hrs)
New day, new country, new continent. After returning from Florida, G-XLEG is heading to the Rainbow Nation for a round trip to ‘Joburg’, or ‘Jozi’, which operates as two overnight flights – BA57 and BA54.
The outward route to OR Tambo International Airport goes over France, the Mediterranean Sea, Algeria, Niger, Chad, Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, Zambia and Botswana, while the inbound service pretty much reverses the same route.
Heading down to the southern hemisphere summer takes 10hrs 7mins, while returning to Heathrow’s Terminal 5 adds 35mins, with the bonus of near jetlag-free travel on both legs.
Landing back on Heathrow’s Northern runway after a short stack over Kent, G-XLEG’s week of flying around the world is complete.
- Journey distance: round trip of around 10,520 miles.
Aviation never stands still for long and for G-XLEG it starts all over again the following day (back to Joburg, then off to San Francisco, Dubai, Miami and Chicago, should you be wondering).
Captain Mike Blythe, BA’s A380 Flight Training Manager, said: “I’ve been lucky enough to fly the superjumbo for nine years since British Airways first welcomed the aircraft into its fleet in 2013.
“I’m constantly impressed by the sheer size of the A380 and its ability to carry hundreds of our customers to their chosen destinations every day. The cabin is so quiet, spacious and comfortable.
“I love flying into LAX. The views of the Los Angeles Basin as we make our approach are spectacular and as a destination, there is so much to see and do.”
Inside the sizeable A380 (Cedar Communications)Here come the double deckers
The pandemic was almost the end of the four-engined Airbus superjumbo. With aviation near-halted globally, almost all 251 jets in service were mothballed at storage airports around the world.
Despite being popular with passengers and crew thanks to their spacious design, comfort and quietness, they’d been struggling somewhat before Covid anyway, with the Animal Farm-esque fuel economy mantra ‘’two engines good, four engines bad’’, meaning airline orders favoured smaller twin-engined jets such as the Boeing Dreamliner and the Airbus A350.
Plus, with a capacity of up to 600, they required an awful lot of passengers’ bums on seats – and Airbus halted production with the last A380 delivered on December 16, 2021.
However, the post-pandemic aviation recovery has been spectacular and, suddenly, airlines needed the huge capacity the double-decker giant offers.
Plans to scrap them were, well, scrapped and they were hurriedly put back on the long-haul schedules.
According to aviation data firm Cirium, there were 133 A380s back in service at the end of 2022 with nine airlines, including Emirates, BA, Singapore, Qatar and Qantas.
It looks like the beautiful ‘big bird’ will be around for a while yet.
A week’s food and drink on G-XLEG
More than 10,000 meals are loaded across all four cabins; passengers get two meals; on each flight 19,596 pieces of individual glassware are loaded.
Passengers drink around 7,300 cups of tea.
More than 750 bottles of champagne and 1,600 bottles of wine are loaded across Club World (business) and First Class cabins.
Airbus A380 G-XLEG fact file 1
- Delivered on September 11, 2014
- Seventh out of 12 BA A380s
- Completed more than 2,900 commercial flights with 30,000-plus flying hours
- Carried more than a million passengers
- Most flown route is Los Angeles, then Johannesburg and Hong Kong
Airbus A380 G-XLEG fact file 2
- Length: 238ft 8in Wingspan: 261ft 10in; wings made in Broughton, North Wales
- Height: 79ft
- Engines: Four Rolls-Royce Trent 900s, made in Derby Maximum speed: 587mph, Mach 0.89
- Range: 9,500 miles
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