Long ago, in the days before passenger ships featured climbing walls, ice rinks, on-board zip lines and nonstop gastronomic gorging sessions, stately ocean liners plied the transatlantic route between London and New York.

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When previous applications were blocked, the so-called Bermuda 2 Agreement was in place, whereby only four airlines, British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, United Airlines and American Airlines, could fly the transatlantic route out of Heathrow, an agreement that the United States government was keen to scrap by putting the hefty conditions on BA's application.

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