The other day we speculated about easyJet’s acquisition of GB Airways, hoping aloud that the former would take over all of the latter’s routes. We’ll admit a vested interest. We’re planning to fly from London to Cyprus next summer, and we want to do it cheaply.

We just came across the first sign that our hopes may be dashed. In today’s TTG Live, Gary Noakes quotes an easyJet spokeswoman at length. She reveals—no surprise here—that GB Airways’ Gatwick slots, not the GB route map, motivated the acquisition. (With the acquisition, easyJet will operate a whopping 24 percent of flights out of Gatwick.) The medium-haul routes to Cyprus and Egypt are “…not the focus of the strategy; the strategy is growth at Gatwick.”

We’ll have to wait a few months to see what this will mean for the orange-and-white. We’ll be sorely disappointed if the acquisition yields no new routes at all.

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