Good luck to all at BACON. Hope things work out okay.
5+ years ago we had Brymon, Manx / BRAL, CityFlyer, etc. Not perfect, but in general they were headed by management teams who were totally focussed on their markets in a minute level of detail, and were successful as a result.
As soon as BA started dismantling those 'focussed' management teams, the days were numbered. The London-centric approach was always going to prevail in the end.