Just want to make a comment on Continentals service from birmingham. There have being some who have feared that the route will be under threat from the preposed merger of United & Co. Im no expert in the airline business, but I feel that this route should be safe. The reason for stating this is I done a little research. From what I understand the BHX CO newark route is one of the oldest regional routes in the UK. Manchester being the oldest CO regional route. It has being operating out of birmingham since the summer of 1997 allmost 13yrs. It survived sept 11 2001 the only change to the service being drop from daily to 6 days a week for that year. From reports that I have read on about this service. Birmingham it is very good route for CO which I assume means that it is a profitable route. This current downturn has being the worst in avigation history. Given this fact and looking at the CAA stats of bhx published on this forum over the last 8 months. The BHX-EWR route appears to have held up very well in my opinion given the economic situation along with BHX other long hual routes PIA & EI with most load factors being in the 80s and over, correct me if i am wrong. There is no doubt that when CO & United Merge they will review current routes to Europe. They will look at profitability and future prospects for growth. In these tough economic times they are only going to keep routes that profitable with good yealds and have potential growth in the future. Someone mention about Bristol here, from what i heard the CO route out of Bristol was not profitable, and did not get the support from the business community ,CO didnt see any future there. The facilities at Bristol are pretty poor (which is not my comment but was stated by a businessman that has used bristol airport) especially when you compare it with BHX where the facilities are excellent , new int pier and further improvements are being planned inc runway ext. BHX has a very large catchment area which has no doubt contributed to CO success at BHX. If the BHX route was not performing it would have be axed long time ago which has happened to other CO routes in mainland europe over the past few years even before the downturn. In a nutshell provided that BHX-EWR route maintains its current good performance and by all indications that seems to be the case. The route should be safe and may even get upgraded in the future. In these uncertian times nothing garanteed, but only time will tell.