As promised here is the analysis on China and how it might affect Manchester OR not as the case may be.
Chinese airlines focus on domestic growth while international expansion remains the poor cousin | CAPA - Centre for Aviation
It seems odd that there is a lot of speculation about trade delegations, goodwill visits etc to China by MAG BUT less focus on other areas of marketing which could make a massive difference immediately.
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You have to be a pretty savvy and jump through hoops to find long haul direct flights from Manchester on some of the price comparison web sites, in fact I am amazed anybody ever finds some of our direct Manchester services.
With the default always being governed understandably by price sensitivity Manchester passengers tend to be channelled via other hubs eg Dublin, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt I would have thought MAG would do well to campaign to get these portals to DEFAULT first and foremost to the "Manchester Direct Service" followed by lowest price !
It's a contentious issue, do you offer passengers the direct flight OR channel them via another hub with a what in some cases can result in considerable layover delays.
Whatever the choice I am sure many of these unsuspecting passengers have a clue what they are booking !
Bottom line, there is little point having the FlyLocal campaign if you cannot identify or find a Manchester service if it's effectively buried, maybe MAG would be well advised to alert the travelling public and possibly raise this as an issue or discussion point ? I am sure it would resonate with some consumer groups.