Hate to be gloomy ( yet again ) but surely this news re WW is just at the margins ?
Welcome though it is , 3 a week here and 2 a week there......well it isnt exactly earth shattering is it ?
Manchester needs to look at how it does things as does the UK aviation industry as a whole.
Whilst last nights peice on BAA was mildly entertaining the most interesting item was right at the end,
"according to the CAA there is little point putting more terminals and runways into the South East because there is no airspace".
Therefore rather than "ramming" everybody into the South East there has to be another solution.
The airlines will not move on this because there is no incentive to do so, why on earth duplicate costs. I do not blame them, but should there be incentives , tax breaks or dare I suggest tax penalties ?
Manchester itself appears to slumber/plod on with no radical ideas or solutions. We gain airlines , they increase frequency and then they wither.....
Nothing changes...!
One telling statistic from another thread referred to the number of flights to New York from the South East, it is now over 30 a day ......!!!!!!!
Compare this to our very own JFK flight, I refer of course to the "meagre" offerings of BA and its scintillating daily BA767, a route which has seen no expansion in frequency or capacity for almost 30 years !
There cannot be another service in the world that has so resisted the weight or public expectation from business or sailed headlong against a suststained backdrop of general economic growth.
Maybe Manchester is punching above its weight, maybe it is just a "regional airport" done good, maybe it doesn't actually deserve major expansion, it seems to do just enough despite itself and it's management, but is "just enough" actually good enough anymore ?
Manchester should do better, the city is fantastic and is now a major European centre ( forgeting of course the sterotypical image still portrayed by the buffoons running Look NW, The Manchester Evening News and even god bless them the Local Council
)
I talk to business leaders throughout the US and Europe they view the City as a major economic hot house and THAT is why it is not just another regional airport and should not be lumped with Birmingham , Glasgow, Newcastle etc as it so often is.
If only somebody would recognise this and put in place the conditions to make it work !!!!
Rant over.