Originally Posted by
Skipness One Foxtrot
The triumph of hope over expectation. Who used to get an aeroplane from MAN-SOU? Business travellers. Who works from home via Zoom now? Those same guys. The SOU thread pummels Loganair as being two expensive, especially with an easyJet alternative. Any new regional turboprop operator isn't going to be a whole lot cheaper. The guys who paid top dollar to fly now don't need to fly, the rest can't believe how expensive flying on an ATR/Q400 actually is.
Some of the MAN guys are rightly astonished that their domestic connectivity is a pale shadow of days gone by, those glory days ain't coming back, there's not enough business demand to drive frequency. We all just watched Zombie Flybe try this! WHAT DID WE LEARN? And codesharing to long haul is icing on the cake, BUT you need strong core point to point business at a high enough price point. Is that there anymore? Little evidence that I can see. It was the ERJ175 that drove the debts of the original flybe, high costs and not enough high yield business, that model was wrong then and it's even less relevant today.
Skip - You are so predictable. MAN-SOU was NOT, REPEAT NOT all business travellers. There was alot of VFR on those flights as well (including myself and friends quite frequently). Southampton is not an easy journey from the NW. Accessing Southampton cruises is also a factor. And business travel - whilst significantly reduced (as I said) - is not entirely extinct. Business travel is reduced, not dead. And not all business travel relates to office meetings either. Merchant marine crew fly to join ships, engineers fly to worksites where their specific expertise is needed. Your thinking on 'business travel' is two-dimensional. As for your comment: "We just watched Zombie FlyBe try this! WHAT DID WE LEARN?" - we have just learned that you didn't pay attention, so you need to do your homework before condescendingly talking down to "the MAN guys" with your customary dismissive contempt. FlyBe 2.0 DID NOT offer any presence on SOU-MAN. They never offered that route. Neither were they on the other two routes I highlighted.
Another "much loved" carrier occupied the SOU-MAN route for a while, but they consolidated advertised frequencies from twice to once a day at different times, frequently cancelled flights and suspended services altogether for weeks at a time. All whilst charging fares one could fly MAN-JFK for. Customers who booked them in the early stages soon gave up on them. Reliability tends to be rather important, especially at an premium price point.