LGS
Oh, so that' it then. It amazes me that people with your attitude to what is evidently an exciting prospect, actually exist! Why would EasyJet publicly announce this news if they had very little intention to actually go ahead with it?
May I actually point out that Gatwick and Edinburgh have seen/will see significant EasyJet expansion. There's no reason why Stansted with it's huge spare capacity and £50m development cannot do the same. The press will always stir things up a bit as per usual. The source just tries to challenge the news to grab readers attention and cause debate, seems quite successful to me!
As for the quote by EasyJet spokeswomen, that will simply be because their plans are commercially sensitive information and they are not yet willing to or nearly ready to give a list of how many new aircraft, routes or passengers they will add at this stage. That will be in "some months" when they roll out their summer 2014 schedules, where more specific details will be announced.
Now I will quote some of your say:
now they have the ability to play the other three bases off against eachother.
Why would they ever want to play off three of their own bases? Yes you could argue Gatwick has the highest yields for them and may want to increase the pressure for other airports to cut fees, yet there's only so much more capacity Gatwick and Luton can take.
Also, important to EasyJet's strategy, it serves a large area of the London market by serving a variety of London airports (precisely their reasoning for adding Southend to their route portfolio). They will certainly not try to squeeze into one as much as possible by playing off the other three, where they already have many "established routes"...
Talking of which, you also say:
moving established routes would seem like taking unnecessary commercial risks.
Wow, what a contradiction!!!
I would also like to ask why receiving an attractive financial deal (and one which you except) would make expanding there or shifting some traffic from elsewhere an "unnecessary commercial risk"?
Any capacity freed up at LTN would quickly be taken by other operators
Er, would it? Who do you have in mind?
Wizzair... No. Eastern Europe is not EasyJet's key market at Luton.
Ryanair...Probably would not want to hurt their Stansted operation now. They are currently in similar talks with MAG themselves and will want to fight to keep their share of Stansted passengers.
Monarch... perhaps very minimally, on and off (and seasonally)
Thomson... A different market altogether (Package holidays, not LCC).
A new operator... I highly doubt it. Who would be so eager to invest in Luton to jump in and fill a gap of around 3 or 4 aircraft moving 30 miles away to a growing competitive rival?
Get over it LGS. Put up all the excuses you like, EasyJet will grow at Stansted in the coming years and even then you will probably still be dismissing the reality of it. Luton may suffer, it may not. Just wait and see though how Stansted grows in success before shrugging off any expansion announcements!