Originally Posted by
Bbtengineer
Insurance would be a nice add on.
My thought was more basic.
It’s currently difficult to discover self connect opportunities. They aren’t really advertised.
I’ll give you a for instance. I have family in New York who want to spend about 3 weeks in the summer in Beijing.
At the time of booking recently, that could be done for about $1900 each via a GDS, or for about $1450 each assembling a self connect with a really decent connection time in Manchester.
As far as I can see a GDS cannot reveal that option even using tools that a travel agent has such as forcing routing codes X=MAN etc.
Warsaw is advertised as a connection point, but Manchester isn’t.
Now, maybe saving that roughly 25% via MAN is worth it to any given traveler and maybe it isn’t, but most people won’t even get to discover it.
It is worth it to my family and it will be to others.
All I am suggesting is that creating better ways of discovering that option could be useful.
I would see it as some IT investment (detailed work but not rocket science) and some marketing (the more complex part). I do think an alliance of similar airports could be useful. It might even create a tool that would help preserve the life and usefulness of some travel agents. People here have also noted various existing services that could be built upon.
I don’t work there but frankly would consider this an interesting project.
It has to be more interesting than “we don’t really have a hub carrier so we can’t do anything”
This has the potential to be a big winner.
There are already several OTA's bundling Self Connection Itineraries with varying levels of included / additional protection cover / Insurance.
There is a particularly big player based in Iceland who partner with airlines and airports to build these itineraries, the airport / airline don't need to do anything different they stay point to point and IF the airport want to add an airside connection if you have no luggage, or fast track if you re-clear security then that is a perk they can choose to fund.
Any delays / misconnects are totally handled by the 3rd party firm and the reviews online give them good feedback.
The benefit of them actually working with the airline is that they have partnerships so for example Jet2, easyJet, Loganair, Virgin, Singapore, Cathay, Air Transat, Icelandair, Emirates and many other. work with this firm, they were also the people behind "Gatwick Connects". Imagine the connection opportunities provided by easy & Jet2 to long haul for example and you can see that this could be a big opportunity for MAN.
The connecting itineraries including protection cover are already distributed through Google Flights, Kayak, Skyscanner etc so are relatively easy to find.
Now add into the speculation that Ryanair have just (in January) quietly removed their own "1 Stop Connections" product from sale, and all references in the T&C's are gone and imagine if they were to partner with this firm to offer connecting itineraries but with no additional cost or changes to their business model and the opportunity for MAG becomes enormous.