I think the BRU route could be improving for a number of reasons:
- 3x daily, with an early departure ex-UK works. 2x daily with a mid-morning departure from BRS emphatically does not.
- SN is now part of Star Alliance, so interlining between SN/LX/LH/OS/SK within Europe is possible. Most people don't seem to realise you can book a ticket with CO to fly from BRS to the USA, via BRU. (Connects nicely into CO60/CO61 at BRU).
- The Embys drive high fares and good yields, even if there's a small demand (total seats per week is only ~850 each way).
The Avros are the right size plane, IMHO, for a hubbing op out of BRS, but LH were saddled with problems:
- Avros aren't the cheapest per seat kilometre to run. Having some E190s or Dash-8 on fleet would help. C-series are still some way off.
- They were overnighting 8 people every night at the Marriott, plus transport to/from Lulsgate. They also had a dedicated station manager (who was great incidentally).
- KL hit them with a fare war, they screwed up their own fare loads, they got hit at a period of weak demand generally, BD got thrust on them, and their LHR flights were yielding low. Killing BRS was the softest cut.
Talk of reducing the travel time to Heathrow must make people even more wary of BRS. If you're an airline exec looking at a map, BRS already looks periously close to LHR - probably only SOU and NWI are closer. Whilst a "shuttle train" from Reading to Heathrow looks appealing, I doubt it will really reduce journey times by train, and it surely won't help you get to LHR for the 07:00 to ZRH or the 06:25 to VIE or FRA, or even the 07:15 to ORD.