Phileas,
A nice philosophy but if I live in the 2nd largest city in the UK and want to fly to Madrid, Barcelona, Rome or Vienna I really don't want to fly via anywhere and add another 2-3 hours on a journey that should only take 2-3 hours.
Agree fully with you from a long haul perspective but the Euro route offering from BHX is at the moment incredibly poor and needs addressing before we start thinking about more trans-atlantic services in my opinion.