KenV:
Do you see what you did here? You looked at just a small handful of city pairs.
Yes, of course I saw what I did there. I chose a couple of high density routes out of Heathrow on that day. I was certainly not going to analyse the entire globe's traffic. And of course, I chose a couple of high density routes. What would be the point in choosing low density routes?
Second, you fail to recognize that there are multiple airlines serving the vast majority of city pairs
And? I didn't suggest that a single airline would take over these routes. I could have said the LHR-AMS route has 12 KLM flights and 8 BA so KLM could fly 4 and BA 3 (or something like that) but I didn't.
I realise that the arguments put by others are logical but then, neither the environmental lobby nor the EU are always logical!
And you certainly don't understand the almost dictatorial role of the EU! Trust me when I say the EU trumps national governments in most things. And pollution is one of those things. If the EU one day decrees that aircraft movements will have to be tailored to suit pollution figures (either noise or emissions) then the UK, Germany and a couple of others will implement such a diktat. The French will shrug their collective shoulders and say something like "Pfft" but eventually would have to succumb.
Regardless of which or how many airlines flying in to Heathrow are foreign owned, if a government says "you can fly x number of flights daily into Heathrow" then nationality of ownership doesn't come into it.