"You can see why EI want to move when more than twice as many pax fly to LHR from BHD than BFS"
Here we go again with these statements that Bhd is everyones favourite, if they can't fly to Bhd they will not travel. Let look at the history. After 9/11, BMI was another of those airlines poached down to Bhd from Bfs. Around the same time, BA decided to withdraw from Belfast completely, under the guise that the Bfs route was loosing money, some would say this was not completely true.
So for many years, the ONLY route from Belfast to Lhr was from Bhd, with BD having slots for about 7/8 services a day. So how could any pax fly from Bfs when there was no service?
Then Ei enter the fray from Bfs, but to a slot constrained airport. So how could they come in and offer the same frequency as BD when they were unable to get slots to do so?
So until two airlines are running the same frequency and same capacity from both Belfast airports to Lhr for maybe 2 years, nobody can say that Bhd is the preferred airport to Lhr. Bfs and Bhd compete on many domestic routes and I am afraid that the Caa stats tell us that Bfs carries more on most of those routes. If Bhd is where everyone wants to fly, why is that? Or maybe the Caa stats are wrong, that group up there that opposes Bhd has got to them.
TB