I am quite surprised at the little number of flights from LHR to Milan. I thought that there would have been alot more but apparently not. Alitalia was alot of it's services from MXP anyway and this is just another.
The good thing about LHR is that if a route is dropped, it doesn't really matter as it is probably already being served by BA/BMI/VS and so it just means more slots are available elsewhere!