An answer to your last question in the 00:48 thread Bagso. A mild number crunch of UK CAA passenger surveys will give a pretty go indication of how many yearly flights per capita each region/county has. I did this crunch for the 2011 survey, and it showed clear differences more and less equal to what you said (twice as much flights per capita from London compared with Manchester). North West is far from being the worst of the regions; you need only to move to neighboring North East to find worse numbers.