British Airways flight suspension in Abu Dhabi has been pushed back again, with the carrier removing Abu Dhabi from its 2027 long-haul schedule and saying the route is now due to resume in Winter 2027/2028. The London Heathrow Airport to Abu Dhabi International Airport service was suspended in late February, and customers booked on the route are now facing a later restart than the one British Airways had previously planned.
British Airways had earlier planned to restart Abu Dhabi flights in late October, then shifted the route to January 2027 before taking it out of the 2027 schedule altogether. The airline had planned six flights a week in each direction and expected to use Boeing 787-9 and Boeing 787-10 aircraft.
British Airways and Cirium
Cirium showed the route as set to restart in January 2027 until as recently as last week, which makes the new timing a further retreat from the earlier plan. British Airways said it was making further changes to its flying schedule to provide greater clarity for customers, and said it was keeping the situation under constant review.
British Airways also said it was directly in touch with affected customers to offer them a range of options. For anyone holding plans around the London Heathrow Airport to Abu Dhabi International Airport route, the practical change is simple: the route is not in the 2027 long-haul schedule, and the airline's current target has moved to Winter 2027/2028.
British Airways Middle Eastern flying
The Abu Dhabi change sits inside a much thinner Middle Eastern network than British Airways had before. British Airways' sole operational Middle Eastern route is London Heathrow Airport to Doha Hamad International Airport, and flights to the Middle East overall were down by 88% compared with September 2025.
British Airways planned daily flights to Tel Aviv starting in late October, daily flights to Dubai and Riyadh in November, flights to Amman four times a week starting in November, and daily flights to Bahrain International Airport to resume in late March. British Airways also planned to boost Dubai and Riyadh to two flights a day in late March, showing that Abu Dhabi is the outlier rather than part of a broad regional retreat.
Abu Dhabi and the 2027 schedule
The timing shift matters because British Airways had already moved the route once, from late October to January 2027, before removing it again. That sequence leaves Abu Dhabi passengers with a later date to work around and a narrower set of options than the earlier schedule implied, especially for travelers who had treated the January 2027 restart as the point at which service would return.
For now, the latest operational marker is Winter 2027/2028, and British Airways says it is still adjusting the flying schedule for clarity while keeping the route under review.
