I hope you're right. We have a strong industrial base here that has a lot of Chinese interest, a fair sized Chinese community, and we're geographically well placed for tourism too.
I don't buy this argument that because BHX sits between Manchester and Heathrow there isn't a market for increased long haul. If Shannon can support 5 US destinations with about 1/4 of BHX's passenger throughput, I don't see why we can't add 1 or 2.