Originally Posted by
SWBKCB
Any link to this decision? To justify the investment I would have thought there would need to be evidence of regular demand for widebody freighter flights, not the possibility of the odd ad hoc charter.
I suspect that this is one of those 'chicken and egg' scenarios. In the face of a decade-long "scorched earth" policy against cargo at MAN under the previous management, based handling agents understandably allowed their capability to lapse and moved essential equipment such as Hi-Lo's to other airports. Now they will require reassurance from MAG that they're serious about restoring capability at MAN (and there is no obvious evidence of this being the case). Ideally, MAG should JV with a handling agent partner to support the cost of restoring service availability on the campus.
It was on February 14th last year that Rutan16 highlighted the Reuters report into this issue. In the eleven months since then MAN has not, to my knowledge, either loaded or unloaded a widebodied cargo aircraft. I'm reliably informed that there have been a number of serious enquiries from operators in the meantime. One year on, we really should be seeing positive progress.