And I expect BA will sit back and allow NT to walk in and corner the market............
Well I would, if were BA and thought that I could leave BMI to do the hard work to get permits etc etc and then make a deal with Lufthansa to buy the mid-haul network off them..?
With the exception of a couple of routes such as LHR-TLV and LHR-CAI where competition/government authorities at each end of the route might not like all the British capacity to be in the hands of a single carrier, I can't see much of the rest of the network being too much of a problem. Plus bung some of the (underworked) BA B767s onto routes such as LHR-AMM, LHR-FNA, LHR-ADD, LHR-ALA etc whilst retaining some of the former BMED Airbus aircraft for the other routes (which, I believe, were BA spec anyway?) and you'd have a potentially quite efficient operation.
...and would this actually be too much of a problem for the UK/EC competition people, if it were the case that Lufty group retained the lion's share of the current BMI LHR slots portfolio and shared it between 'group' carriers, perhaps something like this:
- LH Cityline take the LHR-UK domestics plus LHR-DUB for feed into Star Alliance carriers at LHR
- Brussels Airlines takes something between four and six daily LHR slot pairs for BRU-LHR, insodoing collapsing the current (4x daily?)BMI ERJ LHR-BRU and SN (2x daily?) LGW-BRU into one 'solid' operation
- a couple of LHR slot pairs perhaps disappear off to SAS to allow them to put morning LHR flights on routes like BGO-LHR and SVG-LHR
- whatever is left could go to funding a Lufthansa Italia move onto LHR-FCO, or Austrian to do LHR-SZG or perhaps even to fund Star Alliance group carriers US Airways or TAP Portugal to consolidate their position at LHR from LGW
...won't hindsight be an exciting thing once LH have reshuffled the BMI group cards and their new hand becomes known?!