Originally Posted by
Bagso
Providing a new runway just for routes such as JFK - Prague pax isn't really helping the UK !
And what of cost?
Heathrow will be sinking under the weight of new debt so will pass that on
In the regulated environment that Heathrow operate in, it serves you well to exaggerate your costs with creative accounting so you can get a higher base to measure your rate of return on.
For example, all the suggestions of costs for the new runway include the land at "current value". As property prices increase in London so the project gets progressively more expensive. However, much of the land, houses in Harmondsworth, etc, has been bought up by Heathrow over many years as it comes onto the market, it is then rented out short term (not directly, of course, but passed through a series of companies), but can be recovered without further cost when desired. But when it comes to measuring their asset base value, it will all go in at current cost.
Regarding JFK to Prague, that is just the sort of traffic you do need for a "world hub". Dubai didn't become the centre of Gulf commerce just through its own businesses, it did it because the huge range of air services to everywhere and every continent, hauling connecting passengers, also made it possible for the business community to share those flights. So yes, if connecting passengers mean BA can do 6x daily to Prague and hourly to JFK, likewise across all other destinations, that reinforces London, and Britain, as a European centre of commerce and international trade using all those flights. In recent times BA have started Belfast and Leeds, are about to start Inverness, and have reinforced Edinburgh etc. This has benefitted all those places, who can now make better connections than before to the world, and all on a UK carrier who typically buys UK goods, builds hangars in the UK with UK contractors and then employs UK engineers, gives jobs to our UK flight crew colleagues, etc.