Originally Posted by
roverman
Hmm. "Grown faster than any other UK-China route ..etc" Really? It is back to 4 per week this summer compared to daily last year, albeit with the larger A330-300. And it drops back to 3 per week for winter again. Doing OK, I would say, but not spectacular. And MAN-CAN slots have been withdrawn again. We need one of the networked alliance carriers on MAN-China if the undoubted potential of this market is to be fully realized.
Have to say I agree with that assessment.
In July 2016 (the first full month of the service I believe) the CAA stats showed a pax figure of 9,232 with an A333 at 4 x weekly. (292 seats)
In July 2017 with daily flights but a smaller a/c (213 seats on a B788?), the increase was 16% to 10,779 pax
In July 2018 back to 4 x weekly, pax were 7,687, a drop of 29% on July'17 and 17% from July'16.
I made the average load 214 in July this year, compared to over 250 in July 2016. So loads are still reasonable.
July may only be 1 month but passenger figures have been down every month since September '17 except for May this year. Frequency over last winter was reduced to 3 x weekly but the that presumably reflected demand.
As roverman suggests, would we be better with a network alliance carrier?
The MAN-PEK service and the importance of China links got good coverage on the main BBC NW News bulletins yesterday but the reality is we still await PVG and CAN which we are told have significant potential.
By way of contrast, CX continues to do remarkably well and it would be interesting to know how many of their passengers are for or from mainland China.