Originally Posted by ecaarch
In general, that is probably correct. But that "traditional wisdom" has always assumed that every business pax is like every other business pax on the NYC-LON route(s). The reality is that pax have business destinations all over and around London. I suspect that a pax that has business with Nestle in Croydon would much prefer to fly into LGW than LHR. Similarly, when I need to get to Brighton, I def would not want to fly into LHR. DL doesn't have to get all of the NYC-LON traffic to be willing to fly into LGW for the route to work, or even a majority of that traffic - they just have to get a share.
That's right; an that's why I said "the ranking was
often thought to be: LHR, LGW, STN and then LTN." (emphasis on "often")
The onward connections from LGW on SkyTeam airlines are not so great, and that would be more of an issue
if NYC-LON wasn't such a heavily O
and D market. This is all to say that DL can make a success of NYC-LON if they wish -- even if stuck with LGW -- but it will require a few minor tweaks. (CO did some of that in their use of LGW and code-sharing on non-SkyTeam carriers.)