Over 100,000 passengers travel from Yorkshire to other regions to fly to New York, so the markets already there.
Is it not freight that is a big contribution to yields on these long-haul routes, plus a high number of people paying premium fares on a regular basis i.e. business pax?
It would be interesting to see if LBA can get any more long-haul routes to compliment the Islamabad one. Dubai would be good too, though as i say i think it takes more than looking at that quote of 100,000 to determine whether a route such as this would work or not. How many of those are regular high fare paying pax? etc..