Heathrow
Folks - The rumour about BA has been doing the rounds with BA crew for 3 months. It came as a result of people looking at LGW being dropped and then guessing. There is a key difference: LGW lost money, LHR doesn't.
Think about this - BA needs feeder traffic from the regions. With NCL it has the luxury of no competition (unlike it's other domestic routes) and it doesn't have to run an hourly schedule unlike MAN / EDI / GLA. Therefore if things did go pear shaped both frequency and capacity can easily be flexed to ensure it makes money. As a minor consideration - BA also has a very large office complex on Tyneside which needs a connection to Waterside.
Long term the risk is the need for slots at LHR. Rather than chopping routes, this can be achieved by skimming a few shorthaul frequencies either from Domestic or European routes or by moving a couple of marginal European routes to LGW - NCL isn't a marginal route. Also consider this - If BA starts direct services from Europe to the US with Open Skies (route authority has already been granted), then does it need quite so many frequencies from Europe to LHR?
With T5, Open Skies, baggage issues, possible new Europe US services and a new aircraft order to sort out, I'd suggest BA has too many things on it's plate to start fixing things which aren't broken. NCL-LHR isn't broken.
You won't find a new entrant who could afford to start NCL-LHR. The slots are too valuable and the US carriers will outbid anyone tried this so the costs of entry would be prohibitive.
Currock Base.