The natural progression from its USA routes seem to be Beijing first, and most of its USA flights started at 4 weekly too.
Shanghai then seems to follow a few months/up to a year later.
I do see however that the ever petty and pathetic Paul Kehoe from BHX has already started his whinging.
He has claimed several times in the past the Manchester 'prostitutes itself' and that it mainly gets routes due to 'deep pockets'. He has now claimed that Manchester only got the Beijing route due to a £12million subsidy. Completely unprofessional and as said, utterly petty and pathetic. Notice that despite everything, Manchester bosses have never risen to his style of public whinging against BHX. When BHX got wizz, you didn't see Ken O'Toole say 'well, it's those deep pockets isn't it'.
Obviously Manchester is only at 23million pax and over 50 airlines purely through unfair subsidies and the likes!
Way to go on the 'gracious looser face', Paul. Had a chance to take he high road but once again takes the bitter lemon express.