Seriously, this topic goes around and around, the rivalry between the pro city and pro international groups. It is a non event the distance that BFS is from the city of Belfast by international standards. BHD is convenient for sure. The consumer uses the particular airport based on what they need. On routes where the 2 compete/ overlap, which is not loads by the way. The fact is that the numbers for the International are generally greater, so that fact should put to bed the notion of BFS being a bad location or too far out of town. Furthermore, there is a far wider travelling public in NI or indeed the Northern half of the Island than just live around Belfast.
Eventually the light will come on for the non commercial people on this forum when they realise that Belfast is far too small to have 2 airports, a topic that has been debated to death on here.
I love to using Belfast City Airport, I use both Belfast airports extensively, and Dublin too, but the table has turned and BHD is now on the back foot after enjoying 1 way traffic from BFS down the road to BHD for a long time. This is truly the first serious occasion when this has happened, after a raft of airlines moved BFS to BHD including Bmi (and by default BA), bmibaby, Citywing (consolidating IOM route at BHD), AerLingus etc, now Ryanair is going to BFS and not returning to BHD (we all know the whole story/ reasons for that). So the tide has turned. I am at pains to see how BHD can reverse the trend with FR in town. Addng Brussels Airlines, which will be way small by comparison to KLM, will not rebalance the deficit.
Now BHD has to the job of needing to grow the business to compensate for the loss of one of its top 5 routes, LGW. Inevitably, from end of October 2016, the airport will be shy of circa 20K passengers per month, while BFS grows by about 30K, so a gap of 50K in BFS's direction...