Birmingham Airport Head of Government and Industry Affairs, John Morris: "You could take out 10% of capacity at Heathrow if Birmingham served passengers where they are [because] 3.3 million passengers a year clog roads travelling from the Midlands to Heathrow."
BHX has a lot of spare capacity. It's catchment area is huge, and if they were to build HS2 it would be very easily reachable from the west side of London. If the UK had a joined up transport policy and was not Londoncentric, BHX could work as a major hub.
Also unfortunately means that those 3.3 Mil could get TO London without clogging up the roads.....and with MAN just a short blast up the M6 (depending on traffic...and the M6 can be total cack I admit ! )
As much as I would like to see Midlands regional airports having a wider reach around the world.....in this day and age, I can't see it