A very interesting post by ATNotts.
At EMA it would seem you are crying out for the flights and interlining opportunities for business travel that BHX is IMO well served by (LH, LX, SN, AF, KL CO (for now!) and EK) whereas leisure users of BHX are increasingly being forced to travel to EMA (amongst others, LTN, LPL, BRS) to take non stop 'leisure/optional travel' flights to destinations across Europe that are not Spain or the Canaries (of course you can interline to FCO, MAD, VIE, TXL and so on and so on from BHX but at a vastly higher price and with a huge time penalty compared to a direct loco flight) What a strange situation
The problem it would seem is: is there enough demand in the region to have both airports hosting a range of short and long haul destinations by both full service and loco carriers? The answer it would appear is not really - full service congregate (and do well) at BHX whilst loco seems to thrive a lot better at EMA than BHX. I am not saying that EMA could not support a full service interline carrier - I think KLM would be great, they have gone great guns at LPL and dont see any reason why they cant do so at EMA, but for now it seems that we have somewhat needless full service airport/loco airport divide in the Midlands leaving travelers of all persuasions frustrated!