Gazmo; much of what you say is true, and yes BA are in a stronger position for a host of reasons, but lets not forget that EI have a good platform to market their existing Belfast London customers, those who have flown EI before will be on the mailing list, EI have strong offers and they will feed BA to some extent at LHR from BHD.
Yes CAA Stats are decling for EI ex BFS but last year BFS LHR peaked at 32k pax and came close to Bmi at 36K, it was a great July, this year flights to London were not great and overall EZY report very soft booking for July during Olympics time. Ignoring all of that not only did EI reduce capacity, but they ended up putting 319 on most if not nearly all of the rotations, moving the 320 to the Canary routes and to Faro, so the disappearance of bmibaby created some profitable opportunities much to the cost of LHR.
The ironic thing about CAA Stats is that we might expect say for e.g. that Belfast London route is about 160k pax per month, when competition comes about it could grow by 10-15% I wouldnt be surprised if the price equation is right and as I said earlier a lot of ppl will do short break in London on impulse, so not only conversion from Euro flights which will be down but impulse trips certainly if the prices are low.
My guess is that BE will take a hit of 7K pax per month between now and year end, progressively rising to that level and the overall EZY mix from BFS will lose about 6K pax per month, otherwise the STN numbers ex BHD may be converts to LHR or LGW on bargain fairs. So my guess is for EI (though we wont know for sure what the split is) 20k per month on LHR, (word is EI secured some good corporate contracts for ex BHD that used to be bmi customers) LGW I will suggest 12-13k pax per month by year end.
So overall that would suggest based on my estimation that
BHD LHR will go to 55k pax per month
BHD LGW will go to 28/29K pax per month
We wont be able to judge very well the EI performance on either unless we have inside info as the CAA Stats will be cumulative for the 2 airlines on each route.
Thinking about WW when they moved MAN and BHX to BHD the totals on the route were approx equal to the combined usual MAN and BHX to BFS...
Time will tell....
EI-BUD