This is very well written, c/o Crosswind from "another place" (we can't mention? I think, if not then I'll edit and amend)
The comments ref American are spot on IMHO, this person is way more eloquent than I have been but I agree with the analysis.
It’s perfect sense to the rest of us, but sadly most Manchester related topics are fraught with emotion. At the expense of facts.
Manchester is a big volume market. No doubt. And it’s a sizeable Trans Atlantic market. No doubt.
But the flows on Trans Atlantic are largely UK outbound. And focused on price sensitive customers. No doubt.
Yes there is some business. And some premium leisure. No doubt.
But aircraft are assets that you use where they make the most profit. For the size of the market Manchester has done well over the years on the US routes. But the hard truth is this... in isolation routes initially did well. American’s ORD route started in 1986, by 1992 it was their first European MD-11 flight, plus a second daily 767. Reportedly their most profitable European route. As time went on more US airlines came... but because people weren’t flying to Chicago, Atlanta, Washington etc they just tore up each other’s markets. That’s the problem. All the different US hub routes just compete with each other - despite looking like they’re going to different places, the final destinations of UK passengers are generally the same. So the very profitable American flight in 1992 was loss making in 2019 because people leaked over other hubs.
And many here herald Thomas Cook as a resounding success. And maybe it was, but they picked the dense point-to-point mainly UK origin routes, which badly hurt the US carriers’ hub traffic. And BA hub traffic via LHR for that matter.
It’s a finite market... just because your incumbents like United, Delta, American were all busy and profitable to their hubs... they’re not immune to someone else adding a load of hub-bypass capacity. When that happened the sums didn’t add up for many of them.
As to the BA bashing... they had their own terminal at Manchester. And a sizeable fleet based there. In the late 1990s mainly brand new 737-300s and EMB-145s. Serving mainly business destinations, at the time that’s what BA did. Leisure was for charter airlines. As the low cost and leisure airlines grew... BA tried to defend their traditional turf; Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Edinburgh, Milan, Zurich. The problem was that BA were really only doing point to point... whereas the likes of Swissair, Lufthansa and KLM could capitalise on their hubs to make their competing service work.
If BA had dropped all the regional/business stuff and shifted to the premium leisure market in the early 2000s, maybe they’d still be there. But even 20 years later they’re only just going into premium leisure properly at Heathrow. Until very recently it was confined to the odd weekend charter and Gatwick.
BA didn’t close their hub at Manchester because it was too profitable. On long-haul they carried on JFK to the bitter end, and attempted Barbados, Hong Kong, Islamabad, Los Angeles, and Orlando. It’d say Manchester-Los Angeles in 1993 on a 767 was pretty out there. If they weren’t interested in Manchester why would they bother starting it?
American Airlines are said to have sabotaged their Manchester flights. Well over the years, they flew to Chicago mainly, and Philadelphia after the merger. But they also tried Boston, New York JFK, Dallas/Ft Worth and Miami... often more than one attempt at each route. Is that an airline that wasn’t trying? I think AA really have given Manchester their all over the years. More than any other carrier, AA were desperate for it to work. They messed around at the end, but you have to assume because it wasn’t making money. Or it would have been protected in terms of equipment used and cancellations. Even United are now gone and not coming back under their current plans.
As far as BA interfering with their partners to withdraw from Manchester... In the 1990s the Qantas Manchester flights came via Heathrow in both directions, and the Cathay Pacific flights were via Amsterdam/Frankfurt/Zurich. So of course when they entered partnership with BA they stopped. Why would you fly a three-quarter empty 747 on a 1 hour leg when your partner has regular flights on that route? Perfect business sense for the airlines, and not massive difference to the passenger. These 1990s era flights were multi-stop anyway. But it annoyed the spotters who wanted to see Qantas, or Cathay Pacific aircraft at Manchester. On the flip side probably improved the contribution of BAs O&D reliant services to those places at the time.
It would be great for T3 British Airways to still be a hub. But I think we have to accept that the reason it’s not now, is due to market forces and evolution. Not sinister intent on BA’s part. To continue to assert that doesn’t aid credibility.
After all, after the sale of the Manchester network to Flybe, did things get any better? And that was an airline that was almost exclusively non-London.
I just believe we should move on from attacking any airline that didn’t make Manchester work as a failure on their part. Some have made it work, some have done very well, others didn’t make it work. But many of the latter gave it a good go over the years.