I don’t think that it’s so wildly far fetched though. Those of us who’ve been around Gatwick long enough will surely remember when BA bought Dan Air in the early 1990s. The business, whilst customer facing as British Airways, was its own registered business called EOG (Euro Operations at Gatwick). The then relatively small number of “legacy” BA shorthaul routes (including some of the old BCAL routes) were shopped out to EOG with the ex BA staff having to move to other fleets or accept the worse terms and conditions more closely aligned with Dan Air. It was a slow burn, but 14 years later, BA set up Single Fleet Gatwick off of the basic terms & conditions of EOG, taking in all of the longhaul flying. There was also another attempt at outsourcing some DC-10 flying, first to Caledonian which was 100% owned at the time, and then to a joint venture with Flying Colours with 777s - the latter went around the time of 9/11. So maybe not so far fetched that the company will look for even lower costs to make Gatwick work.

There was a wonderful, though no doubt apocryphal, story that EOG was originally going to be called Short Haul at Gatwick until someone realised it spelled out SHAG, so Euro Operations at Gatwick was picked instead.

I do personally find Euroflyer an odd name choice, even if it most likely won’t be recognised by customers. At least Cityflyer was relaunching an older BA brand. I would have thought that maybe they’d have followed IB with their I2 and created BA Express. The company seems to be really struggling with recruitment and retention, unsurprising when you compare what BAEF are offering compared to easyJet and even Ryanair now that they offer fixed roster patterns.

Thank you for the walk through memory lane, I’m sure that someone will be along eventually to tidy this up with any gaps in my knowledge.