Birmingham-7

[nwoody2001]

Its interesting that you people put Birmingham into a 3rd league with LTN and EDI now leaving us behind, but with the exception of pax figures, I would never put LTN and EDI into the same league. You have the likes of EDI which does have a great range of airlines (35 on wiki) and a good list of TATL connections but is massively variable with regard to seasonal routes. Of its 7x TATL routes:

• Air Canada -Toronto (Seasonal)
• American - Philadelphia (Seasonal)
• Delta Airlines - Boston (Seasonal), JFK (Seasonal)
• United - Chicago (Seasonal), Washington (Seasonal), Newark

…Only United's Newark service is year Round, all others are seasonal. Ok, don't get me wrong,I would love BHX to have all of the above, but seasonal routes are only of use to the tourist market, and market that BHX doesn't have with regard to inbound tourism. These routes simply wouldn't work in that form out of BHX.

With regard to other long-haul routes, the only other EDI has is daily Dubai, daily Doha and 2x weekly Beijing, which compared to our 2x daily Dubai, daily Doha, 6x weekly Dehli/Amritsar , 3x weekly Islamabad, 5x weekly Turkmenistan, plus TUI Long-haul, BHX isn't doing too bad.

With regard to Luton, this is an airport that doesn't have a single TATL route, and only has 11 airlines, which, with the exception of El Al (very random) and a season Iberia Express link to Vigo, all other airline and routes are either LCC or Holiday airlines. Yes the capacity they have some of their European routes are stunningly impressive, again, a fraction of which I would love to see at BHX, but alas, I wouldn't trade off our long-haul routes for that…

Just an interesting perspective. Both LTN and Edi are doing well, but both have major shortfalls in what we would like out of BHX. BHX also have elements in their route portfolio that I suspect both EDI and LTN would love to have but alas the markets between BHX, LTN and EDI are so varied they almost can't be compared!