Are We Never Happy?
WBT -
Reporting on real market conditions is not a matter of moaning or promoting joy/misery ... it is about compiling reliable data based upon which businesses can competently plan for the future. You seem to be in the camp of those spin doctors who believe that if you say "everything is wonderful" often enough then it will be so. Have you though about becoming an MP? I prefer to assess real world data as it actually is, not as I would dearly like it to be, though I can certainly see the attraction of living life on happy pills!
I will not repeat the facts listed in earlier postings, but they remain truths. Brent Crude closed over $120/bbl last night, and it appears to be in a sustained rising trajectory (not a brief spike to $147 as in 2008). That is serious stuff. A real concern for airlines. UK Consumers are facing VAT at 20%, rising inflation and a squeeze on household incomes (not to mention job security). Airlines and tour operators are well aware of all this. They have to be, and they have to incorporate these realities into their forecasting and planning if they wish to see their businesses survive and prosper in the future.
The major tour operators will redeploy assets displaced from markets such as Egypt and Tunisia, but only to the extent that profitability can be maintained. If they move significant additional capacity into Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece they again come head-to-head with the no-frills carriers such as Ryanair. This squeezes margins (to arguably unattractive levels based upon business risk). And this also puts them back inside the Eurozone where they have been strategically reducing exposure over recent seasons. The "Club Med" countries also come with the risk of endemic industrial action as citizens there protest against austerity programmes. Tourists are always a favourite target. So yes, the big tour operators will redeploy such capacity as they deem sustainable, but they will not pile on marginal product for the sake of volume alone. UK Tour Operators have matured: their goal is sustainable profits, not customer volume targets. Remember too that in the time since the big UK tour operators cut back in the Eurozone, hotel groups there have signed long-term bed contracts with operators from new markets (Russia, Poland etc.); UK companies can't just decide to waltz back in at the drop of a hat. There is more to it than that, and hoteliers want long-term commitments.
In answer to your question asking whether I am ever happy [with progress at MAN] my answer is this. I am neither happy nor unhappy; I evaluate factors affecting business according to real data, not emotions. Obviously, I would like to see MAN prosper along with the airlines and tour operators which support the airport, but I will not report fantasy data for the sake of spreading good cheer on the PPRuNe forum. My contributions to the PPRuNe discussions endeavour to educate and inform other users, as I hope to learn from them in turn. I will not promote happy talk and spin as economic reality; readers here deserve better than that. They can read "Harry Potter" over a frothy cup of cocoa if they want a feelgood top-up. If they read my postings I'll tell it as it is - good, bad or indifferent.
There is much to commend your super-happy outlook on life; you must have a great time and I wish you well! You're probably great company at a party. But sometimes inconvenient realities do intrude and must be taken in to account. Libya is not facing "troubles", it is embroiled in a ruinous civil war with no easy resolution in sight. Oil is at an elevated price, economies are hurting, Western Governments are engaged in "QE to the Moon." Top business leaders MUST take account of such realities if they are to be successful stewards of their companies going forward. And its no bad thing for we contributors here on PPRuNe to face facts too.
Rgds. SHED.