Call100 & Helicraig - loving your posts!
IMO BHX and its management got it wrong way back in the late 90's when it remained resolutely loyal to the BA/full service airline horse and showed arrogance of the highest order when it came to the then developing loco operations, which I believe were viewed by them as an irritating flash in the pan. Of course our loyal BA punters would not travel up the M42 to EMA to catch a flight that doesn't even offer an inflight meal they thought. Well, they thought wrong didn't they! Airports like EMA, LPL and BRS instead took a very proactive view to these new-fangled carriers, opened their arms and have now got very strong networks of routes in place when compared to the mid to late 90's. As a result, these airports now claw much more strongly to BHX's catchment area than ever before. BHX's network meanwhile give or take a few East European routes, IST (hanging on in there!
)and increased frequencies on long established routes, looks remarkably similar to that in the early noughties. Yes perhaps other airports have sold their souls and balance sheets to the likes of FR, EZY and so on, but I haven't seen any of these airports shut down because of their reliance on them.
As I have stated before, I am not saying that BHX should have ditched its full service carriers, far from it, they provide an excellent and useful way to tap into hundreds of worldwide destinations from BHX. And I know this is also true for European destinations too - but should pax to/from the UK's second city be condemned to ONLY being able to hub to get around some of the major European cities? No airport should put all its eggs in one basket and having a range of carriers
is a strong selling point. But, there should be a choice, it is true for sure that not every route to every major European city is viable from BHX but there surely there should be a better choice available than at present?
Despite changes at the top, there has been a continued lack of interest in low cost airlines at BHX. Although it does have FR, MON and WW, BHX is still behind in terms of based units and destinations compared to others. No wonder the management are trying to squeeze as many shops into the place as possible to make up for the stagnance in aeronautical activity!!