Outsourcing.
Interesting, so BA could sell the ground handling as far as the ramp is concerned? To be honest they've been doing this in quite a few places such as JFK. A friend of mine told me that BA subcontracts the ramp in JFK to Evergreen Handling. I don't see the point in keeping the ramp if you don't have third party customers. BA would be better off creating their ground handling company (even with minority ownership) with specialised companies like Swissport. In Heathrow many much smaller airlines like Alitalia handle many more airlines than BA, which makes it a unique case.