Airport taxes are heavier at Birmingham compared to EMA... there is currently only 3-4 flights a week to Pisa from EMA, and Marseille is untouched, and they could easily add more Girona flights, so why choose Birmingham, Easyjet could move in, bmibaby are in there with Marseille, Nice and Barcelona + Rome and Milan and BE also have Milan, so why are ryanair going into BHX instead of EMA...
Clearly EMA would have been a better choice for expanding...