Hello, it's Thursday the 24th of September and thanks for joining me, Simon Corder, for the latest on

travel and destinations from the Green List and the travel desk of the Independent. Today, British

Airways ditches its Gatwick short-haul operation. Those BA passengers stranded in Tashkent are they due compensation?

And the UK airport that lost almost £1,000 for every passenger it handled in a year.

Of course, this podcast, unlike that, is completely free, as is my weekly travel email.

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Gatwick Airport has always had problems trying to make money at...

British Airways has always had problems trying to make money at Gatwick Airport. Gatwick Airport's

actually done pretty well out of British Airways. But over the decades, it's tried many, many

different business plans and none of them have quite worked. Coming into the coronavirus pandemic,

all BA flights from Gatwick were grounded. Then things

started up again, but only long haul. They've got a very nice triple seven operation from Gatwick,

which runs to typically the Caribbean at the moment, hopefully Florida quite soon.

Now, they haven't started up the short haul routes.

They want to, particularly from next summer, and they were looking at having a new subsidiary.

It wouldn't be a separate airline.

It would look and feel like BA from the passenger's point of view, but it would be based on lower costs. And that's what they've been trying to sort out with the pilots,

basically saying, we're competing against EasyJet. It's really tough. You give us a bit of leeway,

and we will give you your jobs. Anyway, the pilots wanted some assurances about pay.

BA didn't give those.

BA has now said, right, that's it. We're canceling everything apart from one little round

...