As has been mentioned a hundred times on here, you can fly 100% full year round and still lose money if they're all in economy. Particularly as London-New York has so many seats to sell, they need the high fares up the front to make a profit. MAN-JFK didn't achieve enough of these high yielding fares to counterbalance the economy fares down the back, couple that to BA not feeding at either end of the route and a high cost base and they lost money.
LGW-JFK always lost money as there was too much choice on LHR-JFK close by. As soon as the IS carriers could, they moved to Heathrow. Added to the fact that Continental is axing BRS-EWR in favour of another LHR-EWR rotation it's a no brainer. You go where the business and ther profits are, not where Mr Anorak would like to see more planes.
