British Airways will retire all of its Boeing 747s as it suffers from the sharp travel downturn. 

The UK airline is the world’s largest operator of the jumbo jets, with 31 in the fleet.

“It is with great sadness that we can confirm we are proposing to retire our entire 747 fleet with immediate effect,” a BA spokesman told the BBC.

BA, which is owned by International Airlines Group (IAG), said the planes will all be retired with immediate effect. The 747s comprise 10% of BA’s total fleet. It had planned on retiring the planes in 2024 but the downturn has hastened this by four years. 

BA is currently the world’s biggest operator of 747-400s and first received them in July 1989. 

The British carrier added it will operate more flights on modern, more fuel-efficient planes such as its new Airbus A350s and Boeing 787 Dreamliners.

US-based Boeing signalled the end of the plane’s production a year ago.

A wave of restructuring triggered by the virus outbreak is hitting airlines, plane-makers and their suppliers worldwide. Thousands of job losses and furloughs have been announced in recent weeks.

Because of this, hundreds of BA ground staff face redundancy as costs rise during the pandemic. BA does not foresee 2019 levels of travel demand returning until 2023.

Passenger traffic across European airports last month was down 93% compared with June 2019.

Funny how a pandemic can induce painfully real lasting change like nothing else really can.