silverstrata
Regards LHR, Boris said on this Hong Kong trip that the old LHR site must be redeveloped immediately, to inject economic confidence in the area. (He was musing over Hong Kong's failure to redevelop the old airport site).
Sure, it is astounding that they have not done anything big. I had presumed that an enormous waterfont development would mushroom.
If Boris told us HOW he proposed to close LHR and redevelop (at the very least massive bridging loans) then we could begin to debate it.
Fairdealfrank is right to say that the 3rd 9at leaste) could improve UK doemstic. Because of the slot limit, BA bought the small, regional airlines, offloaded them to LGW and gave themselves lovely slots on the cheap. Not least when they later off loaded them to others. The did that to the Isle of Man TWICE!
No admonishment was possible because the govt (both) said that the market would deal with it. It dealt with it by outting it out of business for the big numbers of long haul. So, the European carriers (nc the LCCs) started lifting the pax to AMS/CDG/FRA and some services go direct to the US East Coast or via DUB.
Lastly, the Mid East carriers started to use MAN and other points to take folks directly. Simples. Yes, the market fixed it OK.
Is it too late to retrieve that situation? I think it is. The investment needed for regionals to expand again to handle the routes (both new and redirected to LHR) is big money. Folks have got used to changing in AMS/etc and of the directs now available.