The airport management will inevitably be looking at beefing up the connectivity from LBA into the international route network given a) it's not great and b) it's therefore a big factor behind leakage to MAN. Keeping what you have is generally always easier than winning new business (see the "Lufthansa" post above to see that) but whether there is a way of working with bmi to improve the marketing of connections through LHR in a way which isn't a waste of time for all concerned is a big question. Much would depend I suppose on how much the LHR experience itself was a barrier to building traffic on the route. The reality is, for connections going East, the Middle Eastern carriers are much more aggressive and have a product in the UK regions which is entirely geared towards interlining. Some might take the view that as an alternative to throwing money at maintaining the LHR link, trying to line up EK or similar might be a better play - especially now that a proven relationship is in place. Get something going into the NYC area and beef up the KLM/AF services for the mid-haul stuff and you start to have something decent to market to the locals.