As a BHX regular, I personally would be happy if they reinstated the BHX/LHR flight and its connections. Personally ,I think there are very few international routes that would be sustainable on purely A-B traffic alone and probably even less post Covid. Even at fortress LHR ,there are a number of African and other carriers who survive purely on connecting traffic and would not be there otherwise. Think the UK does well in having regional airports that offer the services they do compared to Europe. As an example , if you live in France then its accepted as the norm that you fly to Paris to connect to anywhere. Dont forget MAN is only 200 miles from LHR and in aviation terms thats nothing. MAN does very well ,and hopefully will continue to prosper, but any ideas of wall to wall A350s or 787s is probably in reality unlikely