Sinking ship? More like a dayglo coloured li-lo with a big hole in it
Seriously though it would seem BHX is still very much struggling to cope with the much increased competition for pax now in particular posed by EMA, CVT and BRS. The traditional catchment area that BHX could rely on has been very much eroded away and pax living in the Midlands have (rightly) a lot more choices to make about where they can fly from and to - gone are the days when BHX was the only choice for many. Although BHX has what I would regard as three strong based lo-co players (Baby, Flybe and Monarch), it would seem that none now want to expand away from their comfort zones. Monarch are playing safe with traditional bucket and spade (effectively they are only doing what MyTravelLite were doing albeit with far better levels of service IMHO), Flybe to be fair have a lot more to deal with than thinking about new routes at the mo (but why no Limoges, Avignon, Rennes, Newquay etc as offered from other bases this summer?) it is only Baby who have stuck their neck out a bit with LIS and MRS.
In the past year or two, BHX has lost a lot of European routes - MAD, LYS, TXL, ARN, VIE, GVA, ATH, TRN and it still has no BUD, VCE, PSA etc. With the right size of a/c and a sensible level of frequency tailored to both the demands of the business and leisure passenger, I believe that all of these could be made to work if properly supported by the airport and marketed to the public. It still amazes me how many people I speak to in the West Mids who have no idea you can fly to New York from BHX!!
BHX needs the route development team to be working positively and meaningfully with the airline tenants it has and actively approaching new ones to develop the airport into the gateway it rightfully should be. I'm sure they are doing all they can but is it enough to stop the rot that seems to have set in?
As a side note, have been looking into flying away for a few days at the end of May, from EMA there are an awful lot of seriously low fares on many FR routes - is there a promotion going on or are loads not that good?