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Just underlines how much demand there is from Gtr Birmingham for flights to China.
When talking of Scheduled Long Haul you must view a much larger market than the 7 boroughs.
In planning the airlines consider many things including proximity of alternate Hubs and their accessibility.
When the operators of Birmingham Airport begin to square and identify the relevant markets and catchment is when they might begin to draw the attention of appropriate business.
Chasing a China connection worse seemingly thinking an irregular tourist service might suffice is imho a recipe for failure.
Think what is the regional demand (both ways) - does it differ from a few tourists going to Stratford, Bicester Village and onto the metropolis
Is the demand driven by boxes or organic blobs.
Is there much in the way of VFR to fill the back of the bus.
Etc.....
Then you have to look at the arbitrary and legislative barriers being imposed by state agencies.
Right now there remain some pretty high hurdles to climb particularly in Sino-UK aviation.
Whilst the number of available slot pairs have been increased by both sides, the effects on the ground appear to have stalled quite significantly.
BA have actually pulled a China service, Tianjin have had their application for additional flights declined !
Access/slot restrictions mean any further LHR flight awards may be difficult and Hainan appear to be considering adding a tag on the Manchester service with a slight frequency increase but possible drop in overall capacity on the Man- PEK sector.
Air China are engaged in domestic territorial warfare with China Eastern and local government agencies in Shanghai specifically around the Central Government One Airline One route policies.
Central government preferred operator for high yield premier routes is Air China whilst China Eastern has been allowed to build a significant regional network out of Shanghai in support of the local development agencies.
Current standoff Air China has been award a number of international routes from Shanghai including one to the UK and another to Spain but can't get local slots
Compound all this with the difficulty (As opposed to ease of a Schegan VISA) for the middle class Chinese tourist outside of Beijing in getting a UK tourist VISA, whilst the student VISA processes become even more arduously scrutinised and its little wonder Paris gets more Chinese visitors than the whole of the UK today is it.
Summarisation perhaps Birmingham Airport from an economic perspective would be better looking a little more widely than focusing on a Chinese link at the moment.
Think Air India and the proposed return of the Toronto tag - That would give the airport a real advantage over Manchester in two important markets when the UK leave the EU.
Right now Manchester has just one weekly winter quasi charter service to Canada and continues to struggle in winning any scheduled direct connections to India what so ever.