Re Airport City:
and just look at that last line, pretty damming !
And also the previous quotes about Manchester needing a wow factor and to encourage dynamic housing. Something of a sting in the tail after a generally upbeat, but lacking specifics, message.
As to APD in Scotland, the impact on MAN and Scotland's support for Heathrow expansion, just a few observations:-
It would be interesting to know how many MAN originating pax are now travelling via DUB to the US on separate tickets rather than using MAN's own flights to the US because of the APD differential. Then there are those passengers who might now be flying LBA or LPL-DUB-USA and not using MAN at all. A trickle or more significant?
If Scotland reduce or eliminate APD and the UK government did nothing about the rates in England, I suspect it would be potential MAN business at the northern and north eastern fringes of its catchment area that might be persuaded to fly from Scotland for available long haul flights instead of MAN. I would have thought for those from its core central catchment, it might not be attractive if it meant a long drive, train journey or flybe connection to EDI or GLA to save a relatively small amount. But of course MAN needs to be drawing pax from a wide a catchment as possible to sustain and hopefully grow its long haul services, so even losing a small percentage could make an unwelcome impact.
Why Scotland (I'm not sure which airports) are supporting Heathrow expansion so enthusiastically is slightly puzzling. Even more frequencies from their main airports to LHR and perhaps new connectivity from some other smaller ones, I would have thought might hinder potential future growth of short and long haul routes from GLA and EDI, and at worst risk the loss of some of the services they already have. It strikes me as a similar concern to that of MAN in fact.
The potential gain is access to yet more flights to existing destinations from LHR and some new destinations, most of which I imagine could be reached through existing hubs used by passengers anyway.
As to Bagso's last point, there does seem to be a distinct lack of airline news just at the moment, although LAX 's comments about TK resuming 3 daily frequencies next summer was reassuring.