I would love to see AFL back, but wonder how the figures stack up to justify the route now.
Maybe Aeroflot could do what Finnair advertise, and be 'the quick way to Asia'.
Also, whilst admittedly it wouldn't be a huge market, Aeroflot opens up quicker flights to places like Chisnau, Ashgabat and the Russian market in General.
We struggle to have mainline services to many more obvious European destinations, so a route to Russia seems very left field
Frankly, I think the MAN network has improved a lot of late. Going to be a bit of a long winded post to show it, but, major city wise and mainline carriers, we have:
Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Bergen on SAS
Madrid on Iberia
Lisbon on TAP
Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Munich, Hamburg and Stuttgart on Lufthansa
Zurich, Geneva and Basle on Swiss
Gothenburg on City Airline
Billund and London on BA (high yield so I count it)
Helsinki on Finnair
Paris and Antwerp on Air France
Lyon on bmi
Ljubniana on Adria
Amsterdam on KLM
Brussels on SN
Munich on Singapore Airlines
Istanbul on Turkish
And without being snobby and realising Low cost carriers are a viable alternative, we have:
Athens, Amsterdam, Bilbao Munich, Zurich, Geneva, Copenhagen, Berlin, Madrid on Easyjet
Milan, Hannover, Paris on Flybe
Milan, Paris, Rome, Talinn on Ryanair
Istanbul, Budapest, Paris, Prague, Nice, Pisa, Rome, Tel Aviv, Barcelona on Jet2
Cologne on Germanwings
Olso on Norwegian
Barcelona, Milan, Venice, Verona on Monarch
So, aside from maybe
Vienna,
Bucharest and
Warsaw, where exactly does MAN lack so much?