rutankrd
Cannot agree more regarding these "fantasy" routes and unlikely carriers.
However your analysis that your average midlands business person would rather driver to LHR is flawed. On the contrary, business people from as far south as Oxford are more than happy to drive to BHX, rather than risk the car park that is the M25 between the M40 and M3, past Heathrow.
Where the problem arises is that to foreign visitors, especially those geographically challenged ones from across the Atlantic, the England is London, and London is England, so getting the inbound business and leisure passengers that come to UK to think beyond London is always going to be an uphill challenge. You can't make a business out of just catering for UK originating passengers, they are probably less than half the story.
Visit England does little to help change that mindset with it's constant diet of advertising to the outside world being based around red double-decker buses, and London landmarks!