A couple of points.
1. Bagso writes as if Davies has reported. But actually he's halfway through. He's decided in his Interim Report that the UK needs more capacity and the place where it needs it is London and SE. Not many people have come out and said 'no,wrong, a full-on regional solution is available and credible'. Now he has to work out what the relative strength of the three options he put forward is. All those will have to be related to a base case in which even more has to be squeezed out of the toothpaste tube. This is where the question of what would happen at MAN, BHX and STN with LHR and LGW full up is really relevant --especially as there must still be a fair chance that's what we'll end up with.
2. Materiality is a big issue.Suppose that the market was opened at MAN and BHX in the way Mr Stringer was proposing. How much difference would that make? What routes and volumes would start up and succeed which currently have not? Is that difference likely to be material to the case for LHR3 or LGW2? My guess is it's within the margins of error of the traffic forecasts for Heathrow. National and international GDP per head, population and ticket price trends are what really drive demand. Supply will follow if the market is there.