They are owned by Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi's leasing department and leased to BA in a finance lease, however this means that BA need to offload the finance lease in a similar manner to the sale of the asset itself, and get someone else to take up the finance lease for a price, or renegotiate with the bank. The assets are not particularly easy to dispose of, since you have to find someone willing to take up the finance lease, and acheive a sufficient price for it so as to make it profitable - this is as finance leases are capitalised on the balance sheet anyway, just like an asset, making the whole sale situation far from dead easy.
Furthermore, how does it help the bottom line when there are more passengers paying economy fares, which don't make the company any money, as opposed to maintaining the capacity to fit more high-profit business class on the aircraft? It makes far more sense for the bottom line to highly price differentiate and reduce capacity, than try to get minimal profit from low margins.
And no, that is not a defence of Ayling's poor running of the company, with capacity cut at simply the wrong time - it is the right strategy now however.
Last edited by Lucifer; 12th May 2004 at 05:50.