Just some thoughts I'd like to put down about the 'positive spin' being put out by some people about the LHR route, before the first flight has ever taken off.
BA have had this order in for new long haul aircraft for some time. I guess they must have had a credible plan for using them within the then existing slot availabilty. Somehow I don't believe they ordered them on the off chance that a load of spare slots would suddenly fall into their lap.
Of course, they may well want to use some of the windfall of bmi slots for long haul expansion, but as they have said, they need quality feeder traffic to go with them. This is what the LBA flights are designed to do, forget the old concept of day returns to the capital, it is dead. BD couldn't make it work from Leeds nor could BE. The train is far superior at doing this, I would suggest from all English regions, apart from possibly the far south west. Scotland may have a stronger claim to this sort of traffic, but their airports also have significant numbers of flights to LGW, LCY etc. to cater for this.
Now, if in due course BA do decide to convert some domestic slots at LHR into long haul, here are some statistics to consider:
North east- pop. 2.6m; pop. growth (2001-10) 2.6%;
flights to LHR 6
North west- pop. 6.9m; pop. growth (") 2.4%;
flights to LHR 17
Scotland- pop. 5.2m; pop. growth (") 3.1%;
flights to LHR 38
Yks/Hbr- pop. 5.3m; pop. growth (") 6.8%;
flights to LHR 4
Flights are from all airports in region, so for Scotland means ABZ, EDI and GLA, and are for a typical weekday in December, as taken from BA timetable. I have ignored other London airports. Other data is from ONS.
Now, where would you reduce capacity to make extra long haul slots available?