Just a footnote about BA's protestations about making a loss on the MAN -JFK route. We have been here before with the MAN-LAX route that operated for two summer seasons using a 767 in the late '90s. Although popular and well supported it was eventually binned as being unprofitable. As soon as that happened we went to 3 x daily out of LHR.
Enter a new accountant at BAR Manchester, who had the unenviable task of unravelling some creative "cross -subsidies" at BAR in an attempt to justify continuing or closing the bases. He was badly briefed by his boss and delved into the longhaul program without being asked to...........
Yes - you've guessed it
The route turned out to have made a tiny profit of £250,000 which was hidden by loading costs and stripping revenue. The freight income being credited to LHR for instance.............