British Airways is rewriting its longest South America mission. From the start of Northern Summer 2027, London Heathrow (LHR)–Santiago (SCL) will stop operating as a nonstop and instead route via Buenos Aires Ezeiza (EZE), Simple Flying reported on 21 September 2026. The published journey time jumps from about 14 hours 35 minutes on today’s nonstop to roughly 18 hours 5 minutes including a 1 hour 50 minute Argentine stop — while frequency rises to daily from the current three-to-four weekly pattern.
Metal for the new routing is the airline’s 272-seat Boeing 777-200ER, not the 787-9 that restored nonstop Santiago flying in 2017. The assigned cabin mix includes 48 Club Suite business seats in 1-2-1 (Collins Aerospace Elevation), 40 World Traveller Plus seats in 2-4-2, and 184 World Traveller seats in 3-4-3. British Airways operates 46 777-200ERs, per ch-aviation figures cited in the same report.
Published sample timings put BA245 leaving Heathrow at 7:25 p.m., reaching Buenos Aires at 5:25 a.m. local next day, then continuing to Santiago for an 8:30 a.m. arrival. The northbound BA244 leaves Santiago mid-morning, stops in Buenos Aires, and returns to Heathrow the following morning. The pattern recreates an older BA product: the carrier previously flew Santiago via Buenos Aires on 747-400s until 2000 before the 2017 Dreamliner nonstop reboot.
Network math favors Buenos Aires and Rio as much as Chile. BA currently tags Buenos Aires behind Rio de Janeiro Galeão; making LHR–EZE a true nonstop sector for Summer 2027 frees more direct capacity into Argentina and lets the Rio market stand alone. Latin America capacity overall is slated to rise about 25% versus Summer 2026. Heathrow–San José, Costa Rica, becomes year-round three weekly, and Gatwick’s Barbados tag network continues with Grenada, Guyana, and Tobago links.
For Santiago passengers the trade is clear: more days of the week, but a longer gate-to-gate day and a mid-journey stop. Business travelers who valued the nonstop 787 may look at Iberia via Madrid or LATAM connections; leisure and visiting-friends traffic may accept the one-stop 777 in exchange for daily availability and Club Suite product.
BA’s separate Gatwick–Kilimanjaro–Zanzibar triangle and the Melbourne-via-Kuala Lumpur return sit in the same 2027 long-haul package but are distinct city-pairs already covered elsewhere. The Santiago change is the Latin America headline: nonstop ends, daily via Ezeiza begins, 777-200ER takes the flying.
Bookings for Summer 2027 should show the one-stop itinerary explicitly. Anyone holding a nonstop-era expectation for LHR–SCL needs to re-check elapsed time and connection protection in Buenos Aires before locking Chile itineraries next year.
Equipment choice also reshapes the premium story. The 777-200ER’s Club Suite hard product matches BA’s newer long-haul standard more closely than some older 787 fits, even if the stop in Buenos Aires adds elapsed time. For Club World customers the daily frequency may outweigh the lost nonstop prestige; for World Traveller passengers the 18-hour day is a tougher sell against one-stop rivals via Madrid or São Paulo.
Regulators and slots permitting, the Summer 2027 package also lifts BA’s broader Americas leisure map — year-round San José, continued Gatwick Barbados tags, and the separate East Africa triangle. Santiago via Ezeiza is the structural change inside that package: it restores an historic routing, densifies Argentina, and trades Dreamliner nonstop romance for 777-200ER daily utility.
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