Just want to reply to wanna be there's comment.
When i was talking about catchment area i was refering to the Pakistani population and not the general population. Birmingham and the midlands does have a higher population of people of pakistani descent than manchester and the northwest. 100000 in b'ham alone.
As for passenger numbers manchester has PIA & air blue flying the route, so common sense would tell you that Manchester is going to handle more passengers. If you look at just the PIA service alone Man/bhx probley have the same loads give or take, which olton mention before.
As for load factors 79% is not brilliant and not bad. No service flies a full loads especially in these harsh economic times. That load factor was for december and does not reflect the whole year since previous loads have being much higher and not far behind Heathrow's which was mention on another forum. Thats not bad! in my opinion, considering bHX distance from Heathrow.
As for TK well if you compare there loads to PIA from BHX that speaks for itself.
I will say this again on the PIA website there is no officail mention of this plan. Some of the routes i can't see PIA giving up like Newyork, but in this climate nothing is impossible!
Finally if BHX - ISB is profitable and doing well with good future prospects then it should stay. If not it will go, simple as that! The Same will apply to manchester and any other route that PIA has, Glasgow service has already bitten the dust.
As olton says only time will tell!