BA maintained a back office function call centre in BFS for years after the Shuttle route was originally pulled.
BA call centre in US is in JAX ,Florida a point they have never served , so link between route and back office functions (NCL ) doesn't apply.
Having said that NCL was always one of the better ( domestic )performing BA routes from LHR as no competition and good P2P yields.
BA acquired a lot of slots from BMI at relatively short notice and didn't have the longhaul resources to utilise these .,conversely shorthaul aircraft were acquired from BMI which have to be utilised..hence routes like RTM , LBA have been introduced as these airports have likely offered very competitive terms ,even if the services will disappear again in the medium term.
Talk of freeing 10-12 slot pairs for longhaul by canx these routes , reducing freq on MAN , pulling PMI , IBZ is a lot easier said then done and saying its a job for the schedulers is very simplistic.
Overtime as the longhaul fleet expands some of these routes will be sacrificed for longhaul expansion but not without a lot of juggling both within BA and with other carriers.
Last edited by BCALBOY; 26th Apr 2013 at 20:47.