WHBM - but E.Mids is outside of the Yorks region, so if Finningley does claw back traffic from EMA - it *will* go some way to addressing the issue. And focussing on short-haul, leisure and IT is exactly the right way to go about clawing traffic back because it is on these types of routes that the greatest leakage occurs.
Whilst Jet2 have undoubtedly increased choice for the seat-only market in the core LBA catchment area, the level of IT services from both LBA and HUY is awful. Between them LBA and HUY managed to scrape 0.9m IT passengers in 2003. Cardiff had 0.9m, Bristol 1.3m, East Mids 1.5m, Newcastle 1.6m.
Manchester had 9.3m charter passengers and when you throw in the seat-only market, one gets an idea of the huge scale of the short-haul leisure market at MAN (and therefore the huge opportunity for LBA and Finningley). At 0.9m, there were as many seats occupied between MAN and TFS in 2003 as there were total IT passengers from LBA and HUY combined. The 2.5m seats occupied between MAN and ALC, PMI & AGP is about the same as the total passenger throughput as LBA and HUY. 50% of the international traffic going through MAN is to just 10 destinations (TFS, ALC, PMI, AGP, DUB, CDG, FAO, AMS, ACE and LPA). 80% of their international traffic is to Europe (inc Cyprus).
This is why Finningley will concentrate on short-haul, low-cost and IT. It is also why the management at LBA are much less worried about Finningley than they are the ongoing struggle to claw traffic back from MAN.
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