What a detailed overview, Prospero ^^

What's plain, or even plane, is that the framework of the BA we have today is very much built on the Future Size and Shape plans of Eddington in the late 90s (and he got drummed out of town) We joke that BA has become, in effect, London Airways, bemoan the absence of certain routes - Seoul, Osaka, KL, Indonesia, Karachi, anywhere in Oz other than Sydney, New Zealand, most of South America - and lament the selling off of the mid-haul BMed/GB destinations. But BA is in profit, competing against carriers from other countries that enjoy vast governmental support and/or Chapter 11 chicanery. And making a good fist of it, too.

The problem it faces now is surely a simple one. What if this doesn't work? If the wheels really do come off the world economy, what is there left to axe? What fat is there left to trim? Will we end up with a BA that's great...just as long as you want to go to the US or India?