Just an ignorant pax but a few things occur to me as regards 'fortress Heathrow'
LHR cannot accept any meaningful number of extra fligts and one small problem-3 hours of fog say -disrupts half the worlds airlines because of delayed aircraxt in Heathrow. I just do not see O Leary and FR wanting to be tangled up in that. And as your man says he hates aircraft and pilots and techies and wants the simplest cheapest model he can get-basic planes -outsourced maintenance no nightstops and he has done well with it.
Would Easy-a pretty marginal but decent operation take these risks ? no chance.
Euro carriers swapping shorthaul slots for complex scedules like AMS-LHR -JFK-LHR AMS. Possible I am sure but do they have the aircraft ? can the Terminal2 (I know KL doesnt go there) gates accomodate bigger aircraft.?Again very complicated and why take the chance
Looking at the other side of the pond Jet Blue is in disarray and Southwest are even less likely than Ryanair for TranAt adventures.All the legacy carriers except CO are a joke in terms of financial strength and quality of service.Who would choose NW over BA or VS?
So this could be largely cosmetic especially in the short term and by that I mean prior a third runway at LHR which is years away. Is 'theoretical access' to LHR going to make any difference at all to BA VS and AA. Whats much more likely to hurt their transat yields is if MaxJet and Co really get going and cream off the J class pax . But theres no votes in that because if BA lose too many business pax Y fares will creep up and up. If they dont and BA lose business across the baord they end up like Untied -is thata good thing??
And there is another lesson which is that unfettered competiton tends to lead pretty much back to the start point. Look at the US Telecoms Industry.Twenty years ago there was one mega carrier, AT&T in its Ma Bell guise. THe monopolywas broken and twenty frantic years later its consolidated back to where it was with 2 mega carriers one in the east one in the west. Is that the way the airline biz is going -maybe 3 big international players all with regional strengths-area monopolies - plus SW?
So the regualtors and polis play with the status quo at their peril-it seldom leads where they intend
PB