Skipness; when I read the suggestion earlier on of a double daily BA I immediately thought of BA's LBA route which you mention.
If we look at the stats for BE's frequent service to LGW, I recall it amounts to about 160/170 each day in each direction. That without growth, would amount to a plane a day in each direction, say 319/320, to work it would need to be a night stop at NQY in the evening and depart early morning for peak morning arrival time. These are like hens teeth. This winter timetable BA's first departure ex Belfast for LHR is 0750 arriving 0915!!! This is a big domestic route for BA and they have no pre 9am arrival into LHR for it. Hence, NQY almost impossible.
Back to LBA comparison , I'm not convinced BA would have ordinarily gone for this route, but at the time of the Bmi takeover and the farming out of ex Bmi slots for competition on domestic routes BA certainly wanted to convinced the relevant authorities that they will support domestics, and with the absence of Bmi on MAN it certainly was a good experiment to use some of the capacity on LBA...
The stats and available data would not inspire BA to revisit NQY...
Last edited by EI-BUD; 26th Oct 2013 at 16:53.