i get the impression if you were ba staff at waterside and suggest operating direct flights either short haul or long haul from the regions the whole meeting would go silent and guards would come in to drag you away never to be seen again!

quite simply it is not ba's business model. they operate from their hub of LHR only, and any flights from the rest of the UK would feed in to that.

BA CityFlyer do dabble a bit with flights from the regions at weekends, but they are a different operating company and have the challenge of trying to find something for the aircraft and crew to do at the weekends when they are underutilized due to LCY operating hour constraints.