Like many people, friends of mine received cancellation emails and texts that their flights from London Gatwick to Gran Canaria were cancelled later in the year. When checking to see whether BA had cancelled the route it became clear that something else was happening.

First, the flights had switched to Heathrow and Terminal 5 – all good

Second, the days of the week had changed – well OK live with that

Thirdly, the flight was now BA536 but operated by Iberia Express. So a BA flight being operated by the supposedly Madrid-only IB subsidiary which employs newer staff on worse contracts and lower pay than established IB staff.

Then, the return flight (BA7053) is now an Iberia flight number with a BA Codeshare number and is an Iberia flight operated by Iberia Express – what?

Of course the BA reservations service has no idea what sort of food and beverage offering there will be on the flight. It’s pretty long – as you can see – so one would hope something would be offered free. The suggestion by reservations was that we wrote in to Customer Services after the flight if they charged for food.

The BA booking system says:

Charges may apply for food and drink. Please check operating carrier website for details

So I wonder if this will be the first BA flight with chargeable food/drink? This is Iberia’s policy:

It is impossible to find about from the Iberia Express web site whether they offer anything inflight.

What about hand baggage? Iberia Express offers four types of fare with very different baggage allowances to British Airways – for example they limit cabin baggage to one item! BA allows 2.

I shall be reaching out to BA about this today and will let you know what I find out.