Originally Posted by
tangey
One assumes a significant portion of the 1.6M passengers last year are business passengers, many of whom will have status. The ability to access the wide range of lounges at T5 might be enough to sway them to BA flights when previous they might have been agnostic, hence bringing up the possibility of the EI codeshare being reduced.
If they regularly connect onwards to/from LHR, then the potential for somewhat shorter connection times and less inter-terminal travel along with lounge access would be appealing to these travel savvy people.
If you assume that a lot of travellers are free to manage their own travel and that status on EI is easy to acquire and keep then your argument holds. Unfortunately GoldCircle is difficult to attain status in, as any mind of promotional fare is denied points. The majority of flights have some sort of "promotion". Gold Circle is firmly aimed at Trans Atlantic passengers, especially those travelling in J. There are no non-airline partners either.
BA status is a lot easier to attain and maintain. Even in RoI, where there aren't Tesco or Credit Card partners.