wrote in message
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On Tue, 17 Dec 2013 10:54:58 -0600
Recliner wrote:
"tim......" wrote:
"Basil Jet" wrote in message
...

Apparently, Boris Island will be considered next year, but isn't on the
shortlist. How that sentence can mean anything is beyond me.

it's apparently just to stop Boris being too negative.

Glad to see the guy dis the idea that London *has* to have a hub.

I've never bought into that one bit

London does have a hub. It's just too small.

Too small for what? Too small to have even more transit passengers
spending
hardly any money in the UK in the few hours they spend here before they
fly
off again? Too bad. There is more than enough runway capacity in the
southeast,
we don't need any more. If BA gave up its regional slots at heathrow
there'd
be no issue there either. Theres zero good reason for flights to leeds and
newcastle from london in the first place when the train can do the job
perfectly adequately, and such flights if they must happen could easily be
done from City or Luton.

Intra UK transit pax are not the problem. It's the perceived need to steal
pax from other European carries at major European "hubs", that is

I was researching flights to SA the other day and it is 20% cheaper to fly
LHR-FRA-CPT with LH than it is to fly FRA-CPT

OTOH it is 20% cheaper to fly FRA-LHR-CPT with BA than it is to fly LHR-CPT.

So the reason that LHR needs to be a hub is because BA (apparently) can't
fill a plane from LHR to CPT without "bribing" pax from Germany to fly via
London.

Except that the only reason that here are seats on the plane is because LH
have bribed Brits to fly via FRA.

This isn't a reason to create a hub, the solution to this problem is to make
sure that your direct flights are competitively priced in the first place!

tim