Being totally cynical, I would take a look at MAN's route map, and ask which lh destinations they serve, but BHX doesn't due to its shorter runway, and then ask how many of those would really be likely to start up at BHX. Presumably, the airport pays for the road diversion, but not the extra fuel used due to cars taking a longer route to get past the airport?
Now that might be taking my cynicism a little bit far, but the airport wants to place itself as a reliever airport for London, and it does at least have a much better proposition than MSE (RIP EDI link).
So looking at the current state of the market in Jan 12, come (summer I hope) 2014, how many routes are we going to get?
I can imagine a few extra leisure routes to the Caribbean, mabe Goa, MBA etc - although how good for the beancounters are these compared to scheduled?
ORD has been discussed as a strong prospect for return, was this not the one route that was withdrawn because of capacity issues - AA 767?
ATL came and went very quickly at EDI - now DL are at LHR rather than LGW, would they look at BHX?
PHL came and went - more about demand & marketing than the runway, was it not (B757?).
Why did AI pull out? BOM & DEL are two markets with silly competition into LHR, but no regionals, not even MAN, that makes no apparent sense.
EY must have been discussed, but if EK can offer 3x daily to DXB, how will the runway xn make much difference?
I note the huge expansion of routes from SE Asia into LGW, but nothing for MAN. Even SQs MAN-SIN is via MUC - maybe that is still attractive from MAN, but why would you take such a routing from BHX when you can go nonstop from LHR with SQ or BA / QF?