The trouble is Skylion - I'm not going to wait for BA to announce a European base of 60 aircraft running W patterns through LHR before I see a threat.
If it is only to be a small base, put the 20 pilots on the bottom of the seniority list, on Lauren T&C's & therefore at no extra cost. If the venture fails, the pilots get the opportunity to join at LHR - again, no extra cost as we are recruiting anyway. They may not want to join anyway and will disappear - no extra cost.
If (as we all hope) Lauren succeeds, then surely BA will not pass up the opportunity to use its new 787's for this - they are designed for the purpose and far more cost efficient than 20 year old 757's. They are however being bought with the money saved from my pension.......
Ryanair was small once. Easy, Emirates, Virgin and, yes, even Jetstar were small once. The only hysteria will be the madness of the company if they think we can't see a Trojan horse when we see one.
Here's hoping for one small concession on Monday. (Me, I'd go for London T&C's but there we are.....)