Dullas is overwhelming dominated by United and A* partners and affiliates ( even Aer Lingus remain wedded to UA on this route sector !).
Problem is for Manchester many much and most of the UA connecting traffic from and to our area just seems better suited to the beyond services offered out of Newark today.
Seems United saw it is a duplication and indeed it really was as it simply replaced the second EWK in any event.
What we need to see from United soon is the always just round the corner reinstatement of a 764 on Newark with the added pallet space this offers.
Back Washington if United can’t make it work standing alone of the Newark operation I am struggling to see anyone else making work in the near future.
Certainly not American whose current policy is to route eastern seaboard connections traffic over Philadelphia period stop.
Delta/Virgin route over JFK/Atlanta - they have just a few flights a day beyond Dullas all to the other hubs ,it’s bearly even a functional spoke - indeed Delta are even pretty tiny down town at DCA !
IMHO the best hope for a restored flight could be as a transit stop-perhaps we could get Ethiopian to reroute ET500/501 through Manchester rather than Dublin and with traffic rights ( they have none on the IAD -DUB sector ! ) and it’s a 77W nice box uplift there !
Norwegian seem very flappy with 7M8 it somehow doesn’t seem to be meeting their expectations of building secondary and smaller TALC markets yet tested. The A321LR may just be real gamechanger !
Thomas Cook/ Condor are imho at the point they need to fortify and consolidate their current route portfolio rather than further expansion for the time being - especially so if they are looking for new investors of the airline operating division as rumoured elsewhere.