Still shopping transatlantic

Back on Heathrow, the Sunday Telegraph says

The British may be spending less, but they haven’t given up on their Christmas visits to New York

Yesterday, the Guardian reported falling numbers at BAA's airports. But:

Heathrow proved the most resilient of the BAA airports, with traffic down 4.8% on the same month last year, partly because the open skies agreement meant there were additional US services.

Whatever anyone says about the need to have a variety of destinations from the Heathrow "hub", in reality the airport is jam-packed with very profitable flights to the US, many of them for shopping.