Dear Carruthers
Load factor up - but what was the yield?
There's an old saying in business that "Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity."
So put up or shut up
Big Tudor
Distance isn't the real factor here, it's the aggro involved.
All the four UK airports you mention have rail connections into London and the journey will take about 1 hour.
The Oz traveller made the mistake of flying into STN, to get to West London - which is not particularly easy due to changes between rail and tubes, whereas LHR would have made a lot more sense.
But Alternberg is not linked by rail to Leipzig and that's the issue.