FRA is still the only major hub in Germany, MUC and DUS (the richest German cities incidentally!) are focus cities for LH like BHX, MAN and GLA were for BA back in the day.
I disagree actually about Munich. It's very much LH's second hub, with a large dedicated terminal for them and their Star partners. Passengers heading from, say, India to the US often have the choice of MUC as a transit point.
There's a large range of short, medium and long haul destinations served by anything from a CRJ to an A346 - you're not telling me that routes like Munich to Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Busan or Jakarta are mainly O&D services! It can't really be compared to BA's bases in the regions.
Germany aren't entirely spot on as Germany has no equivalent of London. Take a breath, no, it does not.
No, but it does have a very similar population density to the UK, which makes Germany quite a valid comparison in my view. Just because it doesn't have an equivalent of London, doesn't mean it can be dismissed. The reason why LH is able to operate at so many of the key airports could be that economic activity is more evenly spread, but that's a debate for somewhere else and won't necessarily suit the perspective of Londoners.
Does any other country in Europe have quite so many airports with long haul as we do? Look at Emirates, they serve GLA, NCL, MAN, BHX, LHR and LGW in the UK and DUB across the sea, that's SEVEN airports in the market. This does not happen in any other European country. (They only serve ~33 airports in Europe btw)
Yes, there are a long haul services from roughly the same number airports in France and Germany - may I point out that DUB does not count. France has at least 7 airports with long haul due to overseas
departements and Germany has MUC, FRA, DUS, TXL/SXF (BER), HAM and STR with some sort of long haul service.
To me, that demonstrates
demand from the UK regions. This is demand which is not catered for by BA/VS via LHR and has been soaked up by EK (along with AF-KLM and LH/LX). Of course when you talk about long haul, for a couple of those airports it's really just a spoke to Dubai (plus a few North American routes) though. Crucial here has been VFR and touristic traffic to Australasia, VFR and business traffic to India/Pakistan, plus business and touristic traffic to the Far East.