Thank you Skipness and Litebulbs for "wishing" us at LGW out of a job.
Please understand I fly BA a lot and I find you guys very friendly and a huge credit to the company. I would LOVE BA to keep hold of Euro Gatwick. I just honestly believe that flying the B737-400 till 2016 is not good for the brand. Some will be 24 years old, and whilst I don't mind so much that on long haul, it's not too common on high intensity short haul, although it does happen with Lufthansa and the classic B737.
My reading of the situation is that BA have played a long strategic game. They have cut out loss making regional and used the threat of closure at LGW to introduce new Ts & Cs on Single Fleet LGW, proved they can work, then rolled them out into Mixed Fleet LHR cutting the feet out from under BASSA.
Hence the loss making regional operations are gone and BASSA nutured. Some would argue ten years overdue. The master plan may be with BA having the "North Atlantic" hub at LHR T5 and massive growth potential from the Spanish hub at MAD when the synergies kick in with the Iberia merger. Hence the possibility may be there to consolidate some slots on the shared BA/IB Spanish routes out of LHR onto bigger aircraft and free up the 7-8 daily slots for the LGW B777 fleet to move into the mainline T5 operation and onto Mixed Fleet. If this becomes possible prior to 2016, the question on the table becomes :
Might the capital expenditure to replace 25 life expired B737s to compete against easyJet out of Gatters have a better return elsewhere?
My heart loves you all, my head says the long game will see you gone.I would be delighted to be proven wrong.