I've just had the following quote in an internal email today. It comes as part of a 'competition watch' email, and does not credit where the source came from:
Wu Xiaoming, manager of Air China's office in Britain, says the airline is likely to launch direct flights to Manchester, which would be a return to the city after running cargo flights there previously. China to Manchester has a market of roughly 245,000 passengers per anum.
Apart from a small sub-headline, this is all it said.