PF,
I fully agree with everything you say in your last post.
(I could point you to other stuff I've said on that very subject, but I respect forum rules too. You could have mentioned the airline as I don't think that's an issue on a forum about airlines & routes).
I just don't think there's enough room in the market for another Malev, especially using a similar sized frame that the very locos you quite reasonably don't like are using.
As it happens, let's say I did want to go to MOW next month, from BHX, my local airport. Malev couldn't have helped anyway - unless a private backer came along and pumped some funding in for a new fleet, including the very regionals we both agree would be needed to make it work.
Whilst I agree about connections supplementing o&d, within Europe at least, most hubs are based much more around the latter than the former (possible exceptions FRA & AMS based on population, but they both have massive hinterlands and key business centres).
So it would be much more natural to be fed through WAW, but where is the inbound from BHX, or anywhere in UK apart from LHR?
In one respect, I will stand corrected - I had thought BUD was quite a bit smaller than PRG, when it is actually slightly larger (both in 1-2m bracket), and respective countries both around 10m. However, economically, Czech Rep is some way ahead, and I would imagine Prague is still a much bigger tourist city. I'll declare a slight bias - my maternal grandmother was from Prague.
Either way - OK dumped their UK regionals some while ago, and they don't do LHR either. For a transfer hub to be useful, it needs to be fed from the regional cities aswell as from London.
So whilst I don't doubt the potential usefulness of PRG, BUD, WAW - or anywhere else in this region as a transfer point, it is only a facility that can be offered by the right airline with the right fleet.
And I'm afraid, that clearly wasn't Malev.