i am not going to argue with anyone i am simply going to point out something i see as hugely, staring you in the face obvious:
lhr is full (except these new slots)
lgw has 2 flights a day to iah
a 3rd flight 3 days a week
daily to atl, dfw, mco, bda
twice daily to bgi
4 per week to kin
5 per week to tpa
this totals 54 flights a week so i would presume i've made a miscalculation somewhere and it is actually 52 (the rumoured number of purchased slots)
this could easily mean the end of lgw lh, however looking at ba's history and the global picture: ba bought bcal (under pressure from the government) no matter what the price so britain had a single flag carrier and so ba had a lgw presence.
why would ba give lgw up? it would give any of the other carriers a huge opportunity from march next year to set up an entirely new transatlantic hub at lgw, ba will never give up lgw because it would give someone else too much of an opportunty.
as for all this rubbish about t5 and consolidating the business etc etc, when t5 opens ba is already too big to be accomodated, and has said the bilateral flights (ib and qs) will be housed in t3 with the other oneworld carriers, why would they try to cram even more in, would they even fit?
where would the a\c go?
why do routes even have to be moved from lhr to lgw, why can't we have entirely new routes or even relaunch some?
give us some of those nice new 787s in the a/c order and stick your fingers firmly in vs's pie, bring back havana, and rio, stick a dubai in for good measure and a nice little jfk. lgw has space, the man power and the energy to meet and overcome anything ba throw at us. lhr and lgw are the same company, it doesn't feel like it some times and i don't know why the company and the unions have perpetuated such negative feelings in the fleets but we are one company.
why can't people at lhr see the opportunity lgw can offer them, we do it cheap so why not send the less lucrative routes to lgw, we will make more of a profit because our cost base is lower, why not send us the nau, ok so it's a 767 but so is the man jfk, a/c can move and we can be trained so why not give us them both, ba's sfg is a huge opportunity for the company they really aren't going to throw it all away now.