BA to stop flying Manchester to London?
Oct 19, 2006, 6:24 am
#31
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: UK
Programs: BA EC Gold
Posts: 9,236
Originally Posted by Jenbel
but you are missing my point. Why should I drive through to MAN to get on a train to LHR (2 hour drive, 2-3 hours by train) , when I can more quickly get on a train from York to London (2 hours by train, +1 hour out to LHR)? In fact, I can drive direct to LHR in the five hours that you are expecting me to faff around on trains!The only attraction of MAN is that I can get on a plane from there. If you are going to remove my air options for flying to the London hub, I'll stop using the London hub, and fly from an airport which is only an hour away, or go to MAN anyway, and in both situations hub through a European hub for a lot less hassle, a lot less loading of baggage on and off trains, and a lot quicker.
If you could take a high-speed train from York to LHR in, say, 2.5 hours (akin to going from Dusseldorf to FRA), wouldn't you do it? I think I would.
But you do have a good point. Unfortunately, BA is a for-profit, publicly-held business. Therefore, its best interests aren't always in your best interests. If there's no money in the market, then BA will pull out. That's the difference between state-run and private industries, isn't it?
BA may well one day decide that the service to certain areas is more trouble than it's worth (look at LBA and CWL, for instance) and thus they are no longer served. BA obviously feel that the business they'd lose (and are losing) is offset by the gains made by serving other markets.
