Why? What's the upside? Long haul yields traditionally follow the London Airport order of order LHR/LGW/ non existant. Why add the additional costs of a split London operation if there's no uplift in revenue?
Hi Skipness One Echo,
Upsides with STN I see being good availability of slots for DY, no large entry costs for obtaining slots, likely much lower cost operation to enable DY to be more competitive on price. Difficult for loco airline to significantly differentiate on long haul given aircraft utilisation at par with incumbent ( usually legacy airlines ). STN may be offer the lower cost airport that can give them a head start here. Though I accept LGW may offer opportunity to give higher utilisation with say 787 as it could do sun spot route during lay over.
AirAsia may have withdrawn but we are lead to believe this was due to impact on parent company.
I wouldn't call the cost of split operation a major issue. Many split their operations across airports at big cities. CDG/ORY, LHR/LGW, MXP/LIN. I would suggest if DY has intensions for long haul at LGW of any scale if will be costly to develop either through procuring new slots of swapping slots from existing operations that are we are lead to believe performing well. Whereas STN has significant capacity.
I certainly believe that STN does have possibilities in terms of transatlantic or inter continental flights. It does require the right airline, with the right approach , differentiated in some way e.g price, service, convenience, that previous carriers have not achieved eg American ex STN on the Atlantic.
EI - BUD
Ps I don't have a preference for STN on the contrary quite prefer LGW, and despite the fantastic progress that it has made I still see STN as having lots of potential.