What a pity BHX-CGN flight has been timed so poorly.
Come-on ! It's very good esp for weekend trips, you don't have to take Friday off work. Take the daily LH BHX-FRA 18:35 which is packed-full esp Fridays. Also, the pretty popular 4U flight back then was also in the evening. And we in Cologne don't stop partying at midnight
The S-Bahn from CGN runs until 1am and needs 15min right into the heart of Cologne, walk 300m to the old town pubs. CGN also has a cluster of hotels, 7min by S-Bahn. CGN-BHX has failed at least 4x before (BA, Duo, 4U, HLX), but you should not condemn this just for the flying times. Some of this actually is due to the UK being in a different time-zone than the continent, so Friday evening flights will always be late. Take e.g. FR's SXF-EMA, arriving 22:00 into SXF (Berlin is really odd, no partying _before_ 1am), and still really popular. There's always LH and BE if you are so so picky when you fly. Oh, and yes, Germans start working at 8am, but this WW flight is not for business people primarily (they would go to DUS). BTW, I think the flight number 15xx hints that the BHX flight will be WW, while EMA with 56xx could be 4U ? Yes, and I await the answer from FR.