Different Chief Execs, different brainwaves. Rob Ayling wanted expansion, franchise agreements, and all that. Eddington and Walsh the opposite, seemingly to impress the shareholders. The fact that a franchise operator or subsidiary was worthwhile or not was by-the-by. Walsh had already been publicly reprimanded by none other than the Prime Minister of Ireland, Bertie Ahern, for putting his and his acolytes financial rewards before the company and the national interests in a buy-out proposal at Aer Lingus.
Truth is that group airline profitability is driven more than anything by the state of the various national economies, and the price of oil. The rest is secondary, provided you have a sensible management team. At an integrated operator like BA, how you allocate head office overheads and shared revenue on connections is key to the figures shown for the constituent parts. basically you can show whatever you want for these. Do you stick BA past pension contributions onto Go, or not ? If not, BA will show worse figures if they alone have to cover it, and the knives from those bonused on the BA figures alone will be out for you at the board meeting.