Originally Posted by
skipness1E
And yet there's no sign of a modern fleet renewal. I wonder how front and centre LGW short haul is post the recent BA Club changes? To be honest none of us can say what BA will do, the whole LGW hangar may well be useful for consolidated LHR maintenance as well.
Is a £13M profit with 25 aircraft that are long since paid for in the main, a business case for a fleet renewal? Are they really just going to stagger on flying LHR hand me down A320s against the competition flying NEOs?
Surely IAG have other options to make more money out of LGW short haul than BA can? I think long haul will be more than fine with new B78Xs but how many more years do we think it'll be before short haul sees a single NEO? EVERYONE else has moved on at LGW in some way to the MAX or NEO in some way.
Respectfully, a lot of what you wrote here is not correct.
The “competition” is not flying NEOs in the main. EZY has, under its British AOC, still more ceos than NEOs (123 vs 50). Ditto Ryanair, Wizz and so on.
The G-GATx fleet isn’t paid in the main, they’re leased.
BA’s Euroflyer profit headline was based on an analysis by CAPA, not by any BA/IAG official information; BA is not usually reporting the results of its subsidiaries, see for example BACF. Similarly, I’d challenge the notion that BA’s costs are that much higher than those of LCCs. The entire non-fuel CASK of BA as a whole, so including longhaul and LHR operations, is about 1 cent higher than that of VY.
Finally, the investment in the hangar at LGW is proof of the importance of LGW. Two lines of heavy maintenance will be, eventually, hosted in there. And work on replacing the LGW 320s has started.