Quote: "
Interesting to see easyJet LGW service cancelled today (as it was yesterday) while FlyBe soldier on. Assume that easy as one of LGW's biggest operators are obliged to cancel flights when the flow rate gets reduced (as BA do at LHR) and (as again with BA) domestic services get chopped first?"
AT BA,
AFAIK, and probably other carriers as well, the idea is to cancel some of the flights on high frequency routes rather than the once/day flights. The former tend to be short haul, the latter long haul.
Makes sense, with high freqency flights, at least pax can reach their destinations sometime the same day, even if it means using large equipment as flights are "combined".
It's probably a little less disruptive than to cancel lower frequency long haul flights, which would mean capacity problems the next day, and aircraft on the wrong continent, etc..
Obviously load factors, particularly premium business load factors, also play a part in determining which flights are cancelled.
Weather conditions at the destination airports have to be considered, of course, which in the case of short haul flights, are likely to be similar.