I echo the previous comments that freight doesn't care where it lands.
It really does, you know. Well, the importers who are responsible for it do anyway. I refer you to the recent storm of discussion in the freight publication 'The Loadstar' in which shippers are up in arms at news that their containers have been landed at Liverpool 2 rather than Felixstowe or Thames Gateway where they were expected (there is currently a congestion issue at SE ports). They've even been given deadlines to collect their containers from Liverpool and return the empties, yet there is an industry-wide shortage of trucks available to do this work. And the cost for this falls to the importers, not to the shipping company. Rows too about 'in time for Christmas' freight backlogged at Rotterdam, Antwerp, Zeebrugge etc. due to the same issue. The notion that 'freight doesn't mind where it goes' is exposed by this as the myth it always was. Those contemporary examples relate to sea freight, but the principle applies generally. That issue sourcing trucking capacity affects air cargo distribution too.
The vast majority of cargo arriving/leaving by air at Manchester is carried in the belly of cargo aircraft, so it could well be argued (current situation permitted) that increasing passenger flights is the driving growth for cargo at Manchester not the occasional ad-hoc charter. For scheduled freigters, there are other airports best suited to handle them in the group and that makes economic sense for MAG.
Yes, it is true that the vast majority of flown freight at MAN is shipped in the cargo holds of passenger aircraft. That is not in dispute. But this reality is not the result of market forces. This is a situation which has evolved by design. It is the inevitable consequence of a long-term policy pursued by MAG to switch-sell cargo leads specifically intended for MAN to other airports in the group. The same cargo liaison team answers all cargo enquiries for MAN/EMA/STN - the MAG website shows the same contact details for all three airports. A cynic might suggest that they have deliberately run down cargo handling capability at MAN in support of this policy by presiding over essential freight-handling equipment being relocated to alternative sites. Now the message is that MAN can't handle this cargo because we don't have [insert name of missing equipment] available. MAN used to routinely handle multiple B747F's per week. Now the message seems to be that they can't. It has become a self-fulfilling prophecy that MAN can't handle pure freighters, because that outcome has been engineered by a decade of planned neglect.
It is very encouraging that the new management team at MAN appears to be making real constructive efforts to attract back air passenger business ("progressive" initiatives put forward by MAN, according to a recent quote attributed to Michael O' Leary). There are early signs that lamentable past instances of the airport turning away requests for additional based units by carriers such as Ryanair and EasyJet are being replaced by initiatives to accommodate all such capacity as based carriers can be incentivised to commit. Rumours of approaching Wizz for a base too. All good progress, to be applauded if confirmed. Kudos for this.
But if MAN is to finally leave behind its industry tag as
"the airport which likes to say NO!!!" once and for all, then there is much more work to be done. Cargo leads - YES! Aircraft parking (when this can be accommodated) - YES! Prospective new hangar tenants offering high quality employment to the region - YES! Training approaches at quiet times - YES! Diversions - YES! Executive traffic - YES! Unfortunately, the default answer at MAN is far too often
NO! Sometimes the answer genuinely does have to be 'No', but at MAN it can often appear to be a case of a default
'NO!' before the underlying question is even considered.
Many Manchester veterans reflect with fondness upon the management team around in the Gil Thompson era when the airport was the 'CAN DO' poster-child of aviation in the UK. How acutely those positive attitudes are needed now. But the (alleged) recent default
'NO!' response to the RAM B767F inquiry - allegedly before handling agents were even approached - suggests that MAN's complacent ultra-negativity towards certain "too difficult for us" market sectors is alive and well. For this culture to change, perhaps some old fossils need to be booted right out of their comfort zone of complacent idleness.
I suggest that in the current challenging market environment, any MAG executive who is still issuing default 'NO!' answers to all new business leads should be summoned for a chat with Ms Smart to explain why they shouldn't be part of the next headcount cull.
Time to see a return to the sorely-missed culture of '
CAN DO' at MAN.