RITISH Airways' district manager Philip Troake started working for the airline as a summer job to keep occupied before he went to university ? that was in 1965.

Forty-one years and many monumental changes later, Mr. Troake can lay claim to the title of Bermuda's "Mr. BA". He is now preparing for a day he has long envisioned, the launch of a daily service linking Bermuda and London's Gatwick Airport.

The seven-days-a-week flights will kick off next Wednesday, boosted by an ongoing seat sale, and will run through October 27, leading to a 40 per cent rise in the number of seats on the London service over the coming seven months.

"I can't remember when we last had daily flights from London," Mr. Troake said. "I think you'd have to go back about 30 years.

"The older generation aircraft needed to refuel on their way to places like Barbados and South America and they would refuel in Bermuda. We also got services going to the western Caribbean, to Jamaica, Mexico and Panama."

When the teenaged Mr. Troake joined BA to work in the catering department four decades ago, the state-owned organisation, in which his father was the Bermuda station accountant, was a very different company from the BA we see today.

After working for a couple of years as a check-in attendant, Mr. Troake got an opportunity to move to the booming cargo department, of which he became manager a couple of years later.

In those days, BA's freight office was in Hamilton, in the Chancery Lane building which is now home to the Bistro J restaurant. Trucks took goods from Hamilton to the airport, where the only storage facilities were tin shacks, eventually replaced by sheds.

Mr. Troake stayed in charge of the freight department until 1986, when he was handed the role of airport manager and took change of BA's Bermuda operation.

"The manager had always been someone they sent from London," Mr. Troake said. "It was the same all over the world. But when privatisation came in, they decided to try to find local people to do the job. And that worked out very well for me.

"Lord King made huge changes and took us from being a financial basket case to a very successful company."

The transition from an inefficient state-owned enterprise to a leaner, more cost-conscious outfit was painful at times, especially during the slump which followed the first Gulf War in 1991. Mr. Troake recalled when "tag-on services", which stopped in Bermuda, and went on to Tampa, Orlando and San Juan, lost $20 million in a year. It put the island's direct UK link in jeopardy.

"BA had to decide whether the service should terminate in Tampa or Bermuda," he recalled. "They decided on Bermuda and we got two flights a week. We broke even on two flights and the following year we got a third flight and it became a profitable route.

"Hurricane Andrew (1992) kick-started Bermuda's reinsurance insurance industry and we started to see the business traffic grow.

"I wanted to see a daily service but I knew it would be a slow development. It's taken just shy of 15 years to get there."

There was little direct lobbying for the more frequent flights from the international business sector, Mr. Troake added, but the huge demand for the Club class cabin on the Thursday flight illustrated the need for additional flights on Wednesdays and Fridays.

attempts to introduce more frequent flights on smaller Boeing 767 planes ? rather than the 777 that is used for all Bermuda-London flights these days ? drew negative comments from business people.

"They wanted their more comfortable plane back, even if it meant less flights," Mr. Troake said. "What we have found is that business people build their trips around our schedule."

As Mr. Troake has climbed through the company ranks, first privatisation and then the arrival of low-cost airlines have led to BA ? and the industry ? being completely transformed.

Competition has become progressively more cut-throat, with fears over terrorism and soaring fuel prices adding to the challenges all airlines have faced in recent years.

As a result BA's Bermuda operation is a vastly scaled-down version of its former self. Mr. Troake misses the buzz of the Front Street office that was closed down on December 16 last year ? the same day the company shut retail offices across the Caribbean.

Customers can now only buy tickets direct from BA online at www.ba.com or by ringing the company's call centre, based in Jacksonville, Florida.

Now the only time Mr. Troake gets to meet passengers is when they are at the airport, rather than when they are buying tickets. "BA had 60 or 70 full-time staff here at one time, including caterers and drivers," Mr. Troake said. "Now it's less than 20. A lot of work has been out-sourced over the years and we have just kept key people directly involved with customer service."

BA's streamlining actions have not been limited to Bermuda and are typical of the response of "legacy airlines" to the wave of low-cost operations that started in the US and now flourish in Europe.

Only last week, BA announced it would close its UK high street travel agency and a call centre in Belfast, a move that will cost 400 jobs.

"The low-cost airlines have no retail offices and you can only book tickets by phone or online," Mr. Troake said. "They have been ruthless with cost cutting.

"I understand that some of them charge extra for pillows and for some of them, all baggage is treated as excess baggage.

"I think the days of people going into a retail outlet to buy an airline ticket are numbered. I'd be surprised if you see any airline retail outlets at all in five years' time."

BA also has to compete with major US airlines which can get themselves out of deep trouble by filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy ? an option not open to European Union-based airlines.

But for now the future of the Bermuda to London Gatwick service looks bright.

"It's certainly profitable," Mr. Troake said. "Any route that's not profitable, we stop selling.

"For a route to be successful, you need a good mix and Bermuda's got a great mix of business and leisure travellers ? the same sort of mix as New York."