"Skipness",
I think the "competing with yourself" argument is sometimes fallacious. For example, isn't this what VW does with Audi, Seat and Skoda (e.g., Golf vs. Leon, Polo vs. Ibiza/Fabia)? I maintain that the decision to sell Go was a strategic error of huge proportions.
If Go had remained part of BA the latter would probably now have a significant presence at Stansted, as well as at three other London airports.
The failure of BA's strategy is evident when one compares its relatively poor performance in terms of cpk/rpk growth when compared with, say, Air France (excluding KLM) or Lufthansa over the last twenty years or so. BA used to be Europe's largest airline in cpk/rpk terms; sadly, this is no longer the case.
BA has retreated to "fortress Heathrow" but there's nowhere to hide now that open skies has opened the airport to more competition. For a while T5 will have some appeal, but what when "Heathrow East" opens (not to mention the T4 "revamp")?
Post-script:
Rough "back of envelope" calculations of revenue passenger-km growth over period 1998-2008:
Air France (excluding KLM) +74%
Lufthansa +55%
BA +3 or 4%
[The data I have found seem to conflict; some would appear to show that BA shrunk in revenue passenger-km terms between 1998 an 2008, from roughly 125 billion to 116 billion.]
Last edited by Seat62K; 4th Jul 2009 at 17:19.