Thanks eastern wiseguy. I also meant to add that I dont feel FR made any return on their operations here. They didnt make a significant dent on the competition, interesting to note for e.g. that Flybe continued month on month to grow LGW BHD numbers... GLA wasnt at all affected by PIK (which was a total flop btw). So in total agreement with a previous poster who said when the 3 year deal ran out Ryanair left town. They blamed the runway rather than BHD management, keeping the door opened for future potential routes to Europe. There was no reason why if the base was making a return they would pull it coming into winter (as domestics fairly consistent over the winter) when they have oodles of 738s parked around the place!
We can all talk about 'good numbers' but when a fare is paid on say a flight to say Malaga of say £60, sweet little is left for the airline when the taxes are taken out. Consider fuel etc and it starts to give a sense as to why the sheer scale of the losses at baby were such. It was a no brainer for BA to pull baby out of BHD as quickly as possible as it was an enormous drain on resources. Despite the reasons for closing MAN and CWL bases, there was no reason why WW could not have kept MAN BHD going, using BHD based aircraft, the reason they did was because it was a dead loss.
What will happen to the package holidays that used Baby ex BHD? Not sure which company but I understand some travel company were block booking seats, Thomas Cook? Easyjet cut back frequency on ALC and AGP slightly this year ex BFS clearly due to the arrival of WW and increased frequency on AGP of LS. The 320 will certainly be warranted this summer ex BFS....
EI-BUD