Quote: “Oh, this one again.
Birmingham was fortunate to have a British Airways base for many years, who tried and tried to market their services and lost money, often bucketfuls of it, every single year. In the end they dropped them over to FlyBe, who have sort of bumped along the bottom with profitability, nothing spectacular.
Many of those they quote who go down to Heathrow are headed, a few at a time, for Cape Town, Minneapolis, Moscow, Cairo, etc, etc. Do we really believe they would all get direct services from Birmingham ? And as the airport has capacity, why haven't they been started ?
Why are there no Air France intercontinental services from Lyon (France's second city) ? Why are there no Lufthansa intercontinental services from Hamburg or Berlin (Germany's first and second cities) ? Because non-hub operations do not work financially. Get used to it.“
Nice one WHBM, you’ve made the point much better than I did!
Quote: “The problem with BHX being the answer to LHR's capacity problems is that "London Airways" has no interest whatsoever in developing European, let alone long haul service. Virgin seems similarly disinterested.”
Read my previous post, ATNotts: they can’t ,or have reason to believe that they can’t, make money from a BHX base. Don’t like it anymore than you, but it’s a fact, and not a difficult concept to grasp.
Could it be that they’re “Londoncentric” as you put it because the country is so highly centralised? That being the case, blame governments, big business and "the establishment", not carriers and airport operators.
"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"
Agree, Beer_n_Tabs, 100%!
Last edited by Fairdealfrank; 6th Jun 2012 at 17:58.