Supposedly Aspire are taking over that space to expand their lounge from next door. I imagine this is a direct deal with NCL airport and Swissport. It would be nice if BA passengers get a patch of this, but I have no grounds to believe that would happen. In the above photos, the old BA lounge is nearer to completion than the old Cheviot lounge that NCL Airport wanted to run as a central lounge like Leeds.

In other news, TK has started the process of adding a service from NCL to IST. This provides fairly strong competition for BA, not least for the Gateshead Jewish community who regularly travel to and from TLV. A range of other areas become more accessible via IST, the other longstanding operator at NCL being EK and their service to DXB.