Plane mad and Craigjay;
Hainan at both Manchester and Edinburgh are effectively Cassia charters combining a nice cargo uplift whilst about a 1/3 of cabin capacity is offered for general sale from Manchester and slightly less from Edinburgh due to shared Dublin capacity.
Open sales from the UK and particularly the front of the cabins are rather disappointing to be conservative !
The Various HNA routes into Heathrow from the secondary and tertiary Chinese markets are following a similar trajectory.
Air China has almost All the business traffic from China including Chinese government and major business (leading party members in the main) to and from the country. China Southern serves much of the remaining trade and is the preferred second carrier of the CAAC much in the way British Caledonian used to be here !
Whilst for reasons of an internal political conflict ongoing between regional and central state agencies at Shanghai between Air China and China Eastern over slots significant expansion here is stymied at the moment.
Without astronomical subsidies from regional governments and the Chinese tax payers the vast majority of those secondary and tertiary routes wouldn’t ever be considered by any truly commercial profit driven business period stop - Evident British Airways failure on purely commercial grounds to Chengdu !
China is far from a goldmine and aviation and multiple colours are a sham of classical Chinese smoke and mirrors.
As for Russian routes to and from the UK please read the political runes carefully - certainly None to/from the regions in the near and medium term - even Alex Salmond ego and entourage won’t fill a weekly 320 flight to the RT studios for his regular treacherous broadcasts !
Hong Kong is always heavily cargo based - Might work I suppose however does the runway length support a fulling loaded 359 landing I just don’t know ( I say landing because the majority of the boxes will be imports)
An Indian route will be some time off imho - Jet are still 8 weeks from commencing Manchester and have yet to measure the performance and further they have a well known record of binning routes if the numbers don’t add up rather quickly.
Whilst Air India go where the GOI TELL THEM TO over what might be an obvious commercial opportunity !
And those other Indian largely flexible fares operators remain constrained by GOI policies and the varous bilatteral treaties, many of which set strict seating capacity limits in the market to protect Air India !
West Coast US and Canada imho remain better serviced from Glasgow where Scotland commercially supports those but only on a very limited summer schedule similar to Manchester - remember that airport has only had service for two seasons so far (Yes Manchester did have connections to Los Angeles by Laker and British Airways in decades past I know) , whilst Vancouver has been served in the past from the Clyde and Ayrshire .
Could those Air Canada Max8s commercially serve Edinburgh from YYZ more frequently than Rouge well yes quite possibly and even year round perhaps twice a week in deep mid winter - Same could be said for their Manchester offerings however the fleet is already stretched on longer domestic and the close TALC routes they are deployed on.
As for South Africa not a chance on SAA ( They are effectively bankrupt) and can’t even make a return on their remaining Heathrow daily flight and are totally reliant on partner Lufthansa Group for support of the German and Swiss routes over those Hubs.
Whilst the chance of IAG carriers offering anything other than dumping you on a shuttle “darn souf’ to Heathrow or Gatwick for the winter Capetown service is about as likely as .............. Ie Not a chance - Well unless and until Thomas Cook offer a seasonal Manchester service and for several seasons and then evaluate the numbers and only then - but probably they’ll go for Glasgow over Edinburgh imho !
Right now and this also applies at Manchester the next few seasons Will be about consolidation and retaining their central long haul offerings.
2019 will be a defining and difficult year for a variety of reasons imho.
Oh and haven’t mentioned two Scandinavian based carriers because they have both signaled they are looking beyond the UK markets in 2019 and both are in financial stress and showing substantial gearing pressure with 2019 being an defining year if long term survival is to be secured .
Norwegian may yet be a target for a take over from someone , whilst Primera seem content on looking at mainland European expansion opportunities surprisingly in some of the major markets and against the established alliance groupings !
Whilst that Icelandic carrier WOW are struggling to sell debt bond packages I understand the ensure sufficient liquidity - Certainly not a good sign or one for stakeholders confidence !