HEATHROW

[Skipness One Echo]

Speaking as someone from the Regions myself, now living in London I have to take issue. When I said that London was the world's Capital, there's a good argument for that being true. Financially and culturally, the world comes to London, not England, not Scotland, London.
Heathrow is pretty rubbish, the infrastructure is creaky and the Tube's a nightmare and STILL they come in massive numbers.
People moan about the lack of a level playing field. Is there a law preventing Globespan launching GLA-JFK tomorrow? Try naming three large French airlines that aren't really Air France. Is that a level playing field?
We need to stop treating London as if it's some regional part of England. It's not. It's London, and unless you actually live here, you won't get that !
It has a GDP bigger than Scotland condensed into an area the size of a beermat. Go figure.
In the regions if you want to fly to a long haul destination, for the most part you will need to connect at a major airport. Be that Amsterdam, Dubai or Heathrow, let's be honest, you have a choice of options in the UK pretty much unsurpassed. Try doing the same on the continent for a comparable price...... Instead let's be British and moan our ***s off and demand that the pie be shared out amongst the regions. I sometimes wonder if some people on here would recognise a succesful business model if they fell over it.
"BA are awful etc etc, they're doomed." Er they make money,as does Heathrow. Don't like it? Fly elsewhere and stop whinging. If enough people did that then the BAA would be forced to act.

YOU CAN'T BUCK THE MARKET. London is much busier than Manchester as Manchester only has a fraction of the inbound tourist market. People who are talking about closing Heathrow to all new entrants and making people fly to Manchester all sounds a bit political and Soviet to me. Lets allow United to access high yield Heathrow and tell Delta to fly "more from Manchester". What? SERIOUSLY?

Free country, free market, deal with it.