Well said Unwell- It would be lovely if BA could be 'funded' by the govornment to provide a 'public' service to the Departments Outre-Mer, for example, or if it bought and operated all BAe aircraft (ahh the days....) and thus be able to assure itself of friendly slot allocation in airports.
Do you really think that if BA bought BMI and or Virgin and EZY and Ryanscare that the competition authorities would turn a blinder??? Of course not, this is a competative market.. but the above scenario has happened in austria, scandinavia and germany, It is possible to fly Fra-Cph on 2 airlines, both of which share the same alliance. Where is the customer choice in that?
UK-CDG, why we have ba, ezy, fr, af, be, bmi to name the biggies.
BA have faced up (perhaps succesfully) to the massive competition that exists here and which other countries still have to experience.
As regards to NCL, yes it is very sad, but it was the franchise operators choice, mainline have maintained their presence.