If money is to be thrown at a PSO route from London to Newquay, then Govt has to offer a sufficiently high subsidy for airlines to be willing to bid to operate the PSO route.
Heathrow has 2 additional costs over Gatwick:
1 - Higher airport charges - go look at the conditions of use documents for Heathrow and Gatwick to compare
2 - A NQY route at plausible times would mean an existing set of flights at the relevant London airport would have to be dropped. A double daily from Heathrow to (for example) Vienna brings in much more revenue than it does from Gatwick. BA would switch the slots to a Newquay route *only* if Govt offered to subsidise at least the difference in revenue between a Vienna route and a Newquay route.
Relatively modest Govt subsidy will get you a PSO route to Gatwick. A PSO route to Heathrow will cost huge amounts of subsidy.
Who's paying for the PSO route, and will they accept the extra costs for Heathrow compared to Gatwick ?
Last edited by davidjohnson6; 18th Feb 2014 at 17:56.