Why Hainan are playing Chinese whispers !
And to me, this is why the Hainan route 'confusion' is such an odd one, and so baffling as to what is stopping the route from happening.
We have rumours all the time, most often from a 3rd party source, but this time the parties involved have added plenty of fuel to the fire.
1- On September 4th in Paris, at the launch of Paris-Xi-an, the vice chair of Hainan Airlines clearly and undoubtedly said that 'Manchester is our next target, to launch some time in 2015'. The articles are out there to back this up (albeit in French).
2- Then, a leaked memo from Hainan appeared on a Chinese site, stating that amongst other routes, MAN would be launched in May, 2015.
3-Hainan staff had been spotted at MAN on at least 3 occasions last year, in quite quick succession, which, to me, is just a bit more than 'scoping the airport' or signing a diversion contract (aside from the BHX charters, no Hainan aircraft gets closer to MAN than Brussels, so, what would be diverting anyway?)
4- Hainan still hold slots for Sept 2nd, and were not handed back. But, ets also remember, while they have said no MAN in 2015, thise slots can be used until March 28th 2016, and, Cathay launched in winter, so, not beyond the realms of possibility that Hainan could launch in winter too.
5- At the back end of 2014, Charlie Cornish stated MAN was just '3 months away from announcing a flight to Beijing at 5 weekly'. Not only is that very unusual wording (normally nothing much is given away from the bigwigs until its official), but, it seemed quite a confident statement. What went wrong in those 3 months to go from a 'dead cert' to then, well, nothing?
6- The very confusing statements from the customer services teams. Yes, the last confusion was a mistake on their part, but, there were seversl communications which seem to suggest MAN was on the cards.
7- September 28th 2014 (ish), George Osbourne states that Hainan have the rights to serve MAN (presumably the rights at the UK end).
So, from the UK end, everything seemed a dead on cert, so, what about the Chinese end?
I was under the impression that Air China had the Chinese end rights, back from 2007, to operate 7 weekly MAN-PEK, which, they were intending to start in 2009. China operates a 1 airline per route policy, so, if Air China still hold the rights at that end, is it them stopping the flight?
If so, MAN could be stuck in a very bad stalemate. CA holding the China end, HU holding the UK end, and neither willing to back down.
Food for thought?