I'm not Manston bashing here at all. Indeed if you look back in this thread (and my posts on other forums) you will see that I want Manston to recover from EUJet and do well. And although the catchment is small, EU Jet and now Seguro have proven that there is demand and passenger flights from Manston are a viable proposition. As for them being a start up airline and unknown, every airline has got to start somewhere
However the proposed schedule of Esperia doesnt inspire confidence. Using my example of Strasbourg to Berlin. Potentially a market there with lots of political traffic. But what will politicians and business travellers want for them to use the flight. At least once daily flights on weekdays. A weekly flight on a Monday will be very little use to them
Also they plan to market MSE at London Kent. Fair enough but business passengers to London expect daily, and multiple times daily flights. And thats what you need to be compeitive against other airlines in the London market. Twice weekly flights to AMS might be fine for leisure passengers from Kent but will be extremely uncompetitive in the larger London-AMS market
They also plan Newcastle-Strasbourg. Please tell me what demand there will be on that route. Hardly any
Their website doen't inspire confidence either. A picture of some taxi-ing planes of other airlines. And can you spot the mistakes in these quotes from their website:
selling tickets to passengers tickets & services.
The company provides on this stage charter flights inside the European Union countries and direct flights to Greece.
Unfortuantely the airline has some very wierd route and frequency choices and a website that clearly hasn't been thorougly checked for mistakes before going online. In my opinion they won't be a success. Hopefully for MSE that won't be the case
The Norfolk flights are very strange. MSE and Norfolk seem very random destinations to have charter flights between them but with Cosmos management talking about the flights to the press I guess there is a very realistic chance they will happen. Hopefully they will work. Its surprising though that Cosmos are doing Norfolk and not Palma. Perhaos an option for them in the future. Would almost certainly be a success
MSE has a bright future ahead of it with Cargo, the expanding Kent Escapes programme and now Norfolk. Perhaps in the future maybe Ryanair may go to Manston. And there is the now regular World Airways charters. However I just cant see Esperia being a part of it. And I won't feel better if my prediction becomes true.