British Airways' City jet stranded on day two
The "curse of BA" struck its latest big launch today when the plane operating its new business-only service from London City Airport broke down.
Passengers on the second day of the new London to New York route were told of a fault with an engine, as they waited in the Docklands terminal.
The service was launched to much fanfare yesterday by chief executive Willie Walsh — 18 months after the disastrous opening of Heathrow's Terminal 5. Yesterday Mr Walsh said: "We believe that this service is going to be fantastic."
Today's 12.50pm departure was given the prestigious 001 flight number that was once assigned to Concorde.
Return tickets for the journey cost £1,900.
Passenger Tom Otley, editor of Business Traveller magazine, was due to fly on the stranded Airbus 318.
Writing on his Twitter site, he said: "The captain has just advised the flight will now not be departing until 14.30pm...The part is one of the aircraft's engine sensors which has been delivered from Gatwick."
Later he added: "It will take 30 minutes to fit, followed by an extensive testing regime as it's a major engine part."
A BA spokeswoman said: "We're very apologetic that there's been a problem.
"Yes, it's unfortunate but we have to fix it, we have to put safely first.
"It's a minor technical problem and our engineers are working on it right now."
