By road Bristol Airport to Heathrow 113 miles, Birmingham Airport to Heathrow 107 miles so much for Bristol being too close to Heathrow, perhaps LH can come up with another reason.
I can understand why LH are saying this.
The Bristol catchment, especially the business segment, is nowhere near as big as that that of Birmingham/West Midlands so any syphoning off of passengers to LHR will have a greater effect.
Furthermore, many Bristol area business people have become used to using LHR over the years; fares can be higher from BRS using LH as has already been pointed out; multinationals particularly often book their employees via LHR rather than use BRS via a European hub for onward travel.
My son, when working for a major US company, was routinely booked from LHR for US travel until I asked him why he didn't use the CO route to EWR from BRS. He wasn't aware of it and his company's booking agents either weren't or, if they were, ignored it.
He was in a reasonably senior position and was able to have his US journeys switched to the BRS-EWR route after that, but he had to be aware of its existence and to ask. Many business people would not be in that position.
I am concerned about the EWR route. Last year the previous BRS CEO publicly called on business people to use it or lose it. Passenger numbers are down by 20% for the first two months of this year although of course it's not possible for outsiders to determine how many business people still use it, or how many do so in the front cabin.
KLM seem to have reduced daily AMS rotations to three this summer when four has been the norm in previous summers.
Back to the LH route to FRA, I was surprised when the airline commenced this route with 100-seater aircraft, three times daily. Presumably they must have considered a switch to smaller aircraft, say their 50-seat CRJs, in the current climate and decided such a move would have been of no benefit.
It seems that LH have no real plans to come back to BRS, at least in the forseeable future. The local paper quotes their spokeswoman, "I will be very surprised if we see a change in demand for Bristol services in 2010."
After nearly two decades of near non-stop stellar progress this year will be, arguably, the most testing in the airport's history. How it comes out of the world economic downturn will be a significant pointer to its progress in the next ten years.