Originally Posted by
skipness1E
BA had a Gatwick based British Airways subsidiary called British Airtours which worked very well. They used to swap aircraft and lease crews to mainline BA as seasonality dictated, they even had an almost identical livery and branding making aircraft swaps fairly painless. They even had their own crews and AOC.
The main issue today is the need to offer Club and be "the real" BA when it's not actually BA Mainline doing the flying.
Agree, but should not be impossible to achieve, Good lounges are in place at Gatwick. BA Cityflyer manages it at London City.
To be fair British Airtours did not operate the kind of frequencies to destinations that operate now and hardly existed in the winter months.
BA long haul Gatwick makes money from Club World and Premium Economy as does BAEF from Club Europe. British Airtours did not offer these and had a very limited long haul schedule.
It was basically a short to Medium haul charter/IT airline.