Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 14:02:55 on
Tue, 2 Sep 2014, Recliner remarked:
Basically, BA puts as many flights into Heathrow as will fit, with the
overflow left in Gatwick. As long haul is more profitable, it's
largely in Heathrow, apart from beach flights. Virgin does exactly the
same.

Exactly - and it's those beach flights which are the ones least likely
to be benefiting from a hub effect.

True, but the demand is for more hub flights, which is why it's
Heathrow that's bursting at the seams, while LCC-focused Stansted and
Gatwick are short of business. With six international airports, London
isn't really short of runway capacity, but it desperately needs a
bigger hub airport.

What it needs to do is shift some of the non-hub flights away from Heathrow.

The airlines operating those flights obviously thought it worthwhile to pay
for expensive slot pairs at Heathrow, instead of the much cheaper ones at
Gatwick or the even cheaper ones at Stansted. Gatwick actually lost *all*
of its US airlines to Heathrow. The fact is that the demand is
overwhelmingly at Heathrow, while Gatwick says it has 25% spare capacity.