Originally Posted by
richardwft
How does a Bostonian who travels BOS-LHR-DEL return without stopping over at LHR contribute to the London and UK economy?
Not an economist or aviation business type but...
Answer: Stuff like er...well you pay a fare...some of your $ will end up as £s... and some of it eventually oils the wheels of the London Stock Exchange etc... Some of it goes straight into payroll and a lot of that will get spent in the vicinity of LHR (ie the UK)... Some of it is buying/leasing the aircraft in the fleet - some of it was/will be made in the UK... Some of it buys the LHR slots ... Some of it buys stuff and services for you to consume on the flight like fuel, food, booze, aircraft parts/maintenance, waste and baggage handling etc which may be bought and/or designed/manufactured in the UK... Some of it ends up with the taxman and (s)he spends some of it in the UK on various services and stuff for the natives...some of that is wages that then gets spent etc etc...
Seriously though, all that is reliant on the airline running the flight because they deem it to be a profitable endeavour over the months/years they see fit to plan ahead. There might well be not enough LHR-DEL-LHR passenger traffic to make it worth the risk so without you and other transfer pax joining the flight... (win win for them if you arrive at LHR on the same airline - you exert the same influence on two routes.) That is the crux of a lot of the argument around LHR expansion versus any other decision as far as I understand it!