Frank
Do you think BA would agree to serve all those UK airports for say 10 years if they got the extra runway (s) at LHR?
they'd really strengthen their case politically
But of course they won't - what they want is more interlining long haul passengers
They need to serve more UK airports (and more European ones to a certain extent) to that they can gain "interlining long haul passengers" out of those regions and stop them from using KLM via AMS to where they want to go...