Originally Posted by
Navpi
This appears to be a rant about THY cunningly masquerading as Manchester news. Can we get back to the Chinese thread which I thought was quite interesting.
Are you for real?
I post an up to date contemporary piece of real life experience about an airline that flies to Manchester from a city connected twice a day to Manchester on the Manchester thread of Airlines, Airports and Routes and you somehow think it's not relevant. Instead you prefer fantasist waffle about airlines that don't fly to Manchester from cities not connected to Manchester? Ah well fair enough but with all due respect WTF do you know about flying every week out of Manchester Airport sat behind your keyboard in rural East Anglia?
It's people like me and the other minority of other posters on here that 'walk the walk' instead of 'talking the talk' who fly these routes that most here only fantasize about. It's our patronage that makes these routes work and leaves open the possibility of the fantasy routes that people here talk about. If you don't want to know what really goes on in the real world, then feel free to ignore.
For those who might be interested.....in China, following the previous discussion....
Hainan
I've flown this route 5 times now - 3 outbound and 2 inbound. I've done the A330 and the Dreamliner. I can see why it is not the stellar success that was predicted. On the three outbounds I've flown, the C-Cabin had less punters each time, the last time it was less than half full and I think this is where it struggles.
Although the operation is slick and works well at the MAN end and the in-fight is pretty good (although the service is a bit wooden and stilted) it becomes apparent on landing in Beijing that Hainan is not China's poster child. Instead of arriving at the world-class Norman Foster designed T3 you end up parked at the old Peking Airport T2 complex and even then remotely parked. It's around a 20 minute bus ride to the terminal.This gives a very powerful reminder of just how prestigious (not) the route is to the Chinese. Being on a 'business class' shuttle bus with your fellow C-Class Manchester travelers, you can hear most are complaining about one thing or another and saying they're going back to Lufthansa or Finnair (*A awards are often mentioned) but the most common complaint is the arrival experience.
If like me you have a connecting flight over in T3, you have to exit the terminal and get on another bus which takes you out on the road network and around another 20 minutes later lands you at T3.
The return leg is worse being in the middle of the night. At first they didn't open check-in until 2 hours before departure meaning you had to sit on a hard floor waiting around with no F&B provision (this appears to have changed now). One time, the entire Hainan check-in system wouldn't work for them until about 1-5 hours before departure.
Frankly, I think the best chance of Beijing being the success it could be is Air China....ditto Shanghai - you get your Star points and arrive at a proper terminal.
FWIW, I'll be heading that way again in May...with Lufthansa.