Gatwick over the 1996 summer timetable period as well as the 1996/7 winter timetable period. BA chose to transfer these routes to Gatwick because they generated lower traffic volumes and were therefore less profitable than its routes to North America, the Middle East, the Indian sub-continent as well as the Far East. They also carried relatively few transfer passengers. This meant that the risk of losing these passengers to a competitor because of Gatwick's smaller number of connections compared with Heathrow was fairly low. BA furthermore decided to transfer a number of barely profitable or wholly loss-making, short haul routes to secondary destinations in the UK and Eastern Europe to Gatwick because BA could use these slots far more profitably to operate additional transatlantic services from Heathrow under this alliance. With the benefit of hindsight, BA had underestimated the strength of the gathering opposition to its planned "virtual" merger with American Airlines. It had also underestimated its opponents' political clout with the regulatory authorities in the UK and the US as well as the European Union. At the time Sir Richard Branson publicly referred to this mega alliance as the "alliance from hell". He feared that it was part of a new BA strategy to drive Virgin Atlantic, BA's main UK-based transatlantic competitor, out of business. He therefore wanted to have it stopped at any cost. BA's US-based transatlantic rivals, especially those that were denied access to Heathrow under the stringent Bermuda II regulatory regime, wanted approval of this alliance to be made dependent upon the successful negotiation of a new UK-US "Open Skies" air services agreement that would supersede Bermuda II and remove all access restrictions to Heathrow. Eventually, the alliance was effectively killed off when regulators on both sides of the Atlantic demanded that BA should hand over hundreds of slots at Heathrow and that anti-trust immunity should be withheld for the Heathrow—JFK "flagship" route. At the same time, BA's senior management had become so preoccupied with this alliance that it did not pay any attention to the fundamental changes that were beginning to re-shape the airline industry at the time. These changes were going to have a profound effect on the commercial environment in which BA was operating. They included the inexorable rise of the low-cost, "no frills" airlines, first and foremost EasyJet and Ryanair, in BA's own backyard as well as the growing competitive threat posed