Davidjohnson6: trolling much? Let me guess you are from Bristol
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To start with the route has good loads that have grown and grown despite the fact it operates only once a day and at a dreadful time meaning any business pax have to stop over to get a days business done. Plus Southampton has and is primarily aimed at the business passenger with Frankfurt being one of the big financial centres. So a good start.
Further and perhaps why the route might work better than bristol is that a lot of the armed forces posted in Germany have their bases in hampshire and use this route. Not so sure Bristol has this market.
An erj-190 is not massively bigger than a q400 and lets not forget both Lufthansa and even Air Berlin have q400's in their fleets
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