{"id":155578,"date":"2026-04-09T15:24:28","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T22:24:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=155578"},"modified":"2026-04-09T15:24:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T22:24:28","slug":"british-airways-cuts-middle-east-flights-shifts-capacity-to-asia-and-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2026\/04\/09\/british-airways-cuts-middle-east-flights-shifts-capacity-to-asia-and-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"British Airways cuts Middle East flights, shifts capacity to Asia and Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy Adaderana<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>British Airways said on Thursday it will cut flights to the Middle East when services resume, permanently drop Jeddah as a destination, while adding capacity to India and Africa, as heightened regional tensions disrupt schedules and weigh on demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The changes follow prolonged disruption after the escalation of the U.S.-Israeli war \u2060against Iran forced the cancellation of more than 21,000 flights, narrowed an already slim flight corridor for long-haul flights between Europe and Asia and complicated operations for global air carriers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The IAG\u2011owned airline, which suspended some flights when the conflict erupted in late February, plans to reduce services to Dubai, Doha and Tel Aviv to one daily \u2060flight from July 1, and to cut Riyadh services from two daily flights to one from mid\u2011May.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>British Airways is also redeploying freed-up aircraft to add daily flights to Bengaluru and Nairobi, \u2060and increase capacity on its Delhi and Hyderabad routes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We\u2019re keeping the situation under constant review and are directly in touch \u2060with affected customers to offer them a range of options,\u201d the airline said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The schedule changes will \u2060apply through the summer season ending October 24, with one Dubai service restarting on October 16.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Source: Reuters<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>&#8211;Agencies<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy Adaderana British Airways said on Thursday it will cut flights to the Middle East when services resume, permanently drop Jeddah as a destination, while adding capacity to India and Africa, as heightened regional tensions disrupt schedules and weigh on demand. The changes follow prolonged disruption after the escalation of the U.S.-Israeli war \u2060against Iran [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[167,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155578"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":155579,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155578\/revisions\/155579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}