Admit that the major perk I see the ground staff losing is the cheap employee flights, the rest seemed to be protected, at least in the short term.

I have had some great staff at LHR and some not so good ones. With the raise/doubling of UK airport taxes, I am rethinking my strategy of connecting in LHR to catch up with friends. That kind of thinking may have more of an impact on the luggage handling volumes since traffic will drop. If I want to visit friends, I would more likely to fly directly to Europ now and connect back to UK since the short haul Y tax for EU is far less than transatlantic. I would be down to 1 trip a year to UK perhaps rather than 4 last year and 3 the year before.

I had to admit I have to laugh that 1-2 years ago a Conceirge (I think she was new) met our plane in LHR since 2 SEs has their bagges delayed from a YOW-YYZ-LHR short connection in YYZ due to delay in outbound from YOW. My bag was Missing in Action too from the same connection but she would not help me since I was E only and reluctant said I can seek help in the arrivals lounge. I think it is short sighted of her since I did make SE last year, admitted with MR but I don't feel the need to make SE again since E is fine for my needs, especially with the downgraded SE benefits recently. I could have made SE in 2004 when I was working out in NZ since I did fly 100K but some poor service early in 2004 and CCRA lead me to make the decision to split my business 3 wasy so I ended up with 50K on AC, 25K on NW and 25K on AA/Qantas for status on 3 alliances.