Originally Posted by
Skipness One Echo
Bagso read it again, that's not what it says at all. You guys need to lose the chippy mentality here. MAN is getting world class new terminal facilities and US pre-clearance, no one relevent in the industry cares what HMG did with Sabena at MAN when 707s were all the rage anymore than SAS or KLM DC8s out of PIK would have become based A330s today only if BOAC hadn't objected. They would have gone anyway!
The "London centric" attitude was to protect the UK flag carrier interests at a UK airport, my geography isn't perfect chaps but even in days of monochrome, MAN was still in the UK and they were protecting British interests and jobs, something we should perhaps do more of. Do you seriously imagine BOAC would still be allowed to have flown long haul from BRU and harm SABENA? No, of course not.
Leave Heathrow to itself, bagso is actually going out of his way to build an anti-northern narrative that's not even on their radar. If Gatwick doesn't threaten them, and much to GIP's annoyance it doesn't, MAN barely registers. The whole BA operation could stop serving MAN-LHR tomorrow and it wouldn't dent plans for a third runway. Can we not celebrate all the positive things without banging on about the grass being greener elsewhere?
Skipness, that line about protecting British jobs is total rubbish. What about the jobs at MAN which were affected when SABENA and Aer Lingus reduced their services.
If going back between forty and fifty years ago is too much for you and you are naive enough to believe history doesn't repeat itself, consider this. May says she wants one nation. Thatcher made out she had the interests of the whole of the UK at heart.
In 1982/3 the Airport Authority, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Under Secretary of State for Transport and various civil servants held a series of meetings, primarily to make a case for a change in the way Manchester Airport was treated in regard to the persistent blocking of route applications through objections by BA and to include Manchester as a player in a number of upcoming bilateral negotiations.
Initially it was implicit that there was no interest on the government side in helping Manchester. It was stated explicitly in the final meeting when we (yes, I was there, you were not) were told there was no room for a major airport in the UK outside of the Home Counties. As Gil Thompson said "that's us told then".
He, of course went on to defy the odds and laid the basis of the airport of today, starting with the fight to get the AA service to ORD.
Now thirty odd years ago may still be too much for you so let's come forward to today. I suggest you read, understand and inwardly digest the following and then, if you can justify it, repeat what you said about Bagso.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/dat...h-east-england
This is not just a Manchester problem, nor an air services problem. It is a major problem for the UK as a unit and with a Cabinet dominated by Home Counties MPs, the rest of the country needs to sit up, take notice and work together to not only divide the wealth more evenly but to share the services and benefits as well.
PS re the SABENA service, they pioneered Manchester to New York when BOAC said therre wasn't a market, placed the 707 on the route when BOAC said it wouldn't work from MAN and , when BOAC had followed on their coat tails at every stage, got the fifth freedom rights removed as SABENA were stealing "their" market!