delta154:
This is far from the truth. If the Growth is soley 'ash related', then why were passenger figures rising before the aforementioned event started to affect passenger numbers?
Also, are you also saying that as the growth is soley 'ash related', that the new EK flight, new QR flight, new TP flight, the 6th based easyjet unit, the new Ryanair flights, a new based Jet2 unit and upgrade from B733 to B738 on some routes, as well as increases across the board from the likes of BD/AA and so on are having ZERO effect on MAN?
Did the passenger numbers rise before the ash clouds came? As far as I see the last positive growth was in May 2008 before the April 2010 events. The graph below shows these monthly changes and the first growth came in October 2010 after a more an less constant decline since the Spring of 2007.
The growth numbers since October 2010 has been like this:
October 2010 +28,996 passengers
November 2010 +21,924 passengers
December 2010 +18,822 passengers
January 2011 +62,552 passengers
February 2011 +39,011 passengers
March 2011
-44,809 passengers
April 2011 +351,352 passengers (+50,000 with ash effect subtracted)
May 2011 +160,106 passengers (+60,000 with ash effect subtracted)
The trend line in the graph takes in to effect the ash and shows a too low bottom and also a way too positive prognosis for June. It seems like around 300,000 passengers were affected in April 2010 and around 100,000 passengers and this must be subtracted from April and May this year to find the real growth. So the real growth now based on this last 8 months performance is around +2%. On a forum with dark bluegreen background colour I predicted some few months ago that MAN will end up with around 3% real growth for 2011. Translated in passenger numbers will this give around 18.6 million in 2011 (included the 400,000 no-ash-effect passengers).
The real problem for MAN has been to replace the charter segment that is in decline with LCCs. The nearby LPL and LBA have both profited on this.
It is indeed more complex than looking into one segment with a short time horizon. The start of the decline in domestic passengers fits like hand in glow with the sale of BACon to flybe. The growth by Emirates more and less equals out the decline at BA to LHR and LGW. In other words, many passengers select Emirates in stead of BA (London Airways) for long haul destinations to the east.
The decline in passenger numbers between January 2005 and today for the charter and the domestic segment has been 4.7 million passengers, and only 2 million of these has been replace with "new" scheduled international passengers. The decline in domestic passengers versus the growth in scheduled intl. doesn't give a correct picture, but is partly a result of long haul passengers trying to bypass the two London airports.