That is because LHR connections are not attractive to us up here whether the OneLondon Alliance carriers like it or not. Their convenience is not our concern.
But there were 908,000 passengers recorded by the CAA as travelling between MAN-LHR in 2009. The
aggregate total of Emirates, Qatar. Ethiad and Singapore was 935,000 in the same period.
MAN-LHR was comfortably the
largest of the MAN-'hub' routes; MAN-DXB as the next biggest was getting on for 400,000 passengers fewer.
The data and the rhetoric don't appear to be telling the same tale here.