The Air New Zealand one is a madcap fantasy (in my view) from planemad.com
What is madcap about NZ? Its been long knowlegeable that they have been looking into MAN, and with the likes of EK/EY/QR/BA/QF and so on taking the cream of the crop, whats wrong with a star carrier wanting take their share of the market? EK themselves have said the MAN market demand is far from being met, so someone somewhere must have a chance of getting their piece of the market. (yes the market may not be to NZ, but by some pax seeking a better option, means EK can concentrate on filling its 'unmet demand'
As for planemad, Most of the guys on that forum, unlike some other sites are mostly genuine airline/airport workers. If they have prior knowlege to something happening and they dont mind sharing the info, they choose this site over others to post on.
The guy posting the info has been right about a few things now, such as EK upping to the A380 this year, VS adding LAS and upping BGI, JFK going year round and the new UK-TPE air agreement just before it hit mainstream sites. Give the site a chance, I know your an analyst and supposedly know the trends and so on but these guys are directly involved in some of the stuff being said there.
they're throwing darts at a world map working out what the intermediate stop will be on this new service
That may be a given but there are good reasons as to why each stop could work. I personally think its between LAX/HKG, (LAX as its a big port for NZ and would be the logical choice, but you cant ignore the fact 138000 are transiting LHR for HKG alone. Yes we dont know about yields but that is a flippin large number!)
I'd love to see the MAN-YYZ back though.
Thats one of the few good things Ive heard you say about MAN. I think AC should come back to MAN. The star presence is slowly building (not really any new routes, but frequency wise star connections are increasing). We only have TS/TCX for YYZ now and I think as business travel seems to be getting better from MAN, the AC biz cabin could work better. Also, as seen as EK/EY/QR cant get more access to canada, maybe pax could get there through MAN (I know there are no code shares but so many internet options now mean pax can book 2 seperate tickets)
Skipness, I know if none of the above happens you will be first to say 'told you so', but for now can you at least spare a little benefit of the doubt, as even analysts can missjudge things.