Reminds me of a comment made by Zig Ziglar (a respected US motivational speaker) about the US airlines, he said "The biggest mistake the (US) airlines made (years ago) was to think they were in the transportation business, when, in fact, they are actually in the people business (in common with every other business)". What he was saying is that good business is about establishing and maintaining good relationships with the customers/end users.
What beggars belief is that any sane person in the commercial sector of the company would think that this sort of action (ie by the company in bussing the pax MAN to LGW) would be a good decision. Think of the loss of business this type of bad publicity might attract. The best (and worst!) type of advertising is "word of mouth" like "we flew with xxx airline and the flight was on time, the cabin service was excellent etc..." as opposed to "whatever you do don't go with xxx airline because of etc..."