Marketing Analyst....the phraseology gave it away. According to many legacy carriers there was no demand for @flights from x and their marketing analysts said the passengers would be happy to transfer through y. Then along came the LoCos. They either tapped into a demand or created one and how did the legacy carriers respond? They either fled (BA at MAN for instance) or as the LoCo prices went up fought back with increased schedules, (Air France, Brussels Airlines, SAS, at MAN for instance). Direct flights from Newcastle,Birmingham, Glasgow, Edinburgh etc. Are not run by airlines grandstanding and flying flags. They are there because the market exists, people want and use them and they produce a profit.
The thinking behind the HAL proposals is partly predicated on the regions feeding Heathrow. The analysts have done their homework and presented HAL with a scenario that fits in that regard almost denying the fact that passengers have deserted Heathrow in droves for Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris or elsewhere when direct flights aren't available from their local airport. That behaviour is very unlikely to change. We have had the implant travel agent phenomenon where even when there have been direct and convenient flights from a regional airport the agent has ticketed people over Heathrow on a cheaper fare (more often than not on BA) found through bulk discounting, ignoring any problems of inconvenience of timing, missed connections and everything else that direct flights should overcome. Fortunately many companies realised the the penny saving had become pound foolish when human factors were taken into account as staff rebelled when they became aware of direct flights.
What the HAL proposal's affects on regional airports would do is inconvenience thousands of people, turn the clock back thirty years and more and give the impression overseas that the UK has only one centre of importance.
By the way, I've come across many marketing analysts in my time. Many are concientious, hard working,accurate and have helped build businesses. There are those, however, who are happy to analyse situations in a way that they can present what the employer/client wants to hear, just so long as they get paid. From your many erudite posts I know you don't belong in the latter category but please accept my experience with tangible and intangible products over many years, that the human being doesn't always, indeed often rarely, behaves as expected.