I don't think you can quite right off BA shorthaul just yet, its quite common to find 75 club pax on a flight into LHR these days. Short haul may be expensive, but like all things in BA, the real cost will never be determinable becuase the accounts make it cost what the management want it to cost. There is room in this market for both full service and low cost carriers. Of course the low cost carriers are great if you can book months in advance and you're off on a leisurely break somewhere. Maybe if you're a cost conscious businessman in the provinces then it makes sense to do some essential business travel on a low cost carrier. Despite this, you cannot get away from the fact that some people will not travel low cost, be it for reasons of convenience, reliability or simply taste. Luton, Stansted et al simply arent as easy to get to as LHR if your based in Central or South London. If you're a busy suit, do you really want to spend more time going to Stansted to fly to Hahn then travel to Frankfurt by train? It may be cheap but what happens when the aircraft goes tech and your stuck there overnight? Do you really want to lose the first day of your weekend break because an orange 737 is bust. Getting your ticket refunded for a 12 hour delay is scant consolation if you've little time to spare. If low cost carriers really were the only way to do shorhaul, then why haven't BA and BD lost all their major corporate customers to Easy, GO and Ryanair? Simple answer is people know that you get what you pay for. If you choose a large, scheduled airline you'll pay more, but you'll know that you've got less chance of being stuck in the middle of nowhere for a long time when things go wrong. If cost was everything then the rise of Skoda would have meant the end of Mercedes Benz, but as we've seen there's room for them both.