@ Windsorian
I must confess that I love your optimism about HS2, but the initial line only goes to Birmingham and that won't be ready until the middle of the next decade, let alone the extension to Manchester! In addition, I'm not sure that it has been definitely agreed that the line will go via LHR anyway?!
You can be rest assured that flights from the regions will continue into LHR for the foreseeable future, especially as Virgin are launching services from there into LHR. I believe it was also a condition of the sale of bmi that BA retains some of the routes to the likes of Aberdeen, Glasgow etc?