LAX_LHR, I understand your point there, although that already happens to an extent... Liverpool (as far as I understand it) did and still sometimes does act as a low cost alternative to Manchester, for example. And I'm sure the same could be said for Leeds.
I don't think it would be feasible, even for an airline like Ryanair to up sticks and move across the hill, they have a huge operation at MAN anyway, and if you think about it, everyone stands to benefit because there is still a devolution to those markets, just less. - I suppose if it was obvious, like Ryanair ditched EDI for GLA and MAN for LBA... Then it should be deemed lawful for the government and airport authorities to block that from happening. Talking about major routes though, if a Chinese carrier was looking at EDI, I doubt they'd then change their mind and go for NCL instead because of lower APD
Regards to Heathrow, how is it that APD works, I thought that, for example, if you flew NCL-LHR-NYC you would pay full rate? A lot of LHR's pax are not transfer though, so to me it still stands to reason that full APD should be payable from there. I honestly think an ideal situation for the government and airport authorities would be to charge full APD and artificially depress the market for UK transfers to Heathrow through higher fares on long haul connections and replace UK domestic flights. From Newcastle for example I think BA would be quite happy if they could drop x2 LHR flights and replace them with another DUB flight, and perhaps a daily flight to Madrid. And this isn't just me wanting to see more tails on the ground I genuinely think it would be an option, in fact I'd go as far as to reducing LHR to x2/3 daily for connections and some O&D, introducing x2/3 daily LCY for majority O&D traffic, bolstering EI to DUB while they build the DUB hub and then 1 daily/10 weekly flights to Madrid, most likely with Iberia express, to cater for connections.
In a market as price sensitive as NCL what does it really matter if people are flying NCL-LHR-LAX, NCL-DUB-LAX, NCL-LHR-HKG or NCL-MAD-HKG... I'd say not much. With every new set of declining figures to LHR I begin to see less and less cause for so many flights, that's one case in which I agree that the LHR slots could be much better used elsewhere. I doubt what I propose would change... But I'd like to think that they would use IAG for it's intended purpose...
VentureGo, seriously? I mean I would, I just don't want to have missed any sarcasm in there if there was any haha :P if not though, thank you very much... How do I go about escalating it as high as downing street?
LEEDS APPROACH -
did you forget to take your meds this morning?