MANCHESTER 1

[GavinC]

Stansted continuing to close in on MAN's 3rd place in the UK rankings too. They'll presumably pass MAN this summer.

[eggc]

I'd say MAN will hold it's own in terms of pax numbers when summer kicks in. STN had tremendous growth over winter and was expected to maybe catch MAN before summer kicked in, but then MAN, on the back of said summer growth, to recapture 3rd...and surpass 25m at some point not too far away.

MAG won't really care which is 3rd and which is 4th though...all the same pot to them.

[Shed-on-a-Pole]

Stansted continuing to close in on MAN's 3rd place in the UK rankings too. They'll presumably pass MAN this summer.

You may be in for a surprise there. STN's growth is all about Ryanair with a much smaller contribution from EasyJet. RYR anticipates capacity growth of 6.17% at STN this Summer season. In recent seasons preceding this their capacity increases had been much larger. EasyJet's programme at STN appears stable but not in stellar-growth mode - capacity is +4.82%. Between them, those two carriers represented 93% of all passenger throughput at STN quite recently. This Summer STN has added a programme with BA Cityflyer (21K seats), Onur Air (78K seats), Eurowings (78K seats), Thomson increase (18K seats), Thomas Cook increase (54K seats), STP Airways (35K seats) [who they?]. Cutbacks include FlyBe (-122K seats) and Germanwings (-34K seats).

Meanwhile, at MAN, the ACL start-of-summer report indicated a 13.1% increase in seat capacity ex-MAN for S2016 season. Realistically, one or two further adjustments will follow ... some remaining programmes to Egypt / Turkey were annotated 'TBC'; a 'paper airline' is listed for services to LCA; Pegasus was showing daily to SAW which remains to be seen, and a specialist tour operator to Turkey has recently ceased trading. So let's call MAN's likely seat-capacity increase for S2016 +12%.

Comparing the respective start-of-season S16 reports, STN is showing +1,043,354 seats [+6.3%]; MAN is showing +2,454,872 seats [+13.1%]. Both of these figures are likely to be adjusted slightly downwards for the reasons outlined in the previous paragraph. But based on projections, MAN is anticipating growth in seat capacity of more than twice that of STN for the season through to the end of October 2016. We must wait to see how load factors respond. What happens beyond Summer 2016 season remains to be seen.

[Sholto Douglas]

As Shed has implied, the ACL report for Stansted only gives an increase of 5.4% for summer 2016.

[MANFOD]

March figures are out 1.74m moving total 23.5m movements 13766

Feb and March have now been loaded on the MAN web site.

Terminal pax up 10.7% and 10.9% including transits for March.

Movements increased 6.87%.

Cargo fell 3.32%

The split for pax:
Domestic -14.6%
Sch. Intl +22.6%
Charter -29.3%

Slightly strange in that ATMs by category are almost identical to pax percentage changes but overall 4% less than the increase in pax as far as I can see.

[chaps1954]

Except for private/GA

Ian

[MANFOD]

True Ian, but if the pax numbers for p/ga had been down 6.4% like the movements, it would only have affected the pax numbers by 120 or so. Still, maybe that fall in movements does have more impact than I thought on the overall picture as p/ga in March was about 5% of the total ATMs

Good results for MAN anyway.

[LAX_LHR]

25 million this year should be child's play (barring any disasters).

I also think it's brilliant to think that the 2 North West airports could potentially handle 30 million passengers this year. Incredible.

[ETOPS]

Except for private/GA

That's minus 100% for me

[roverman]

Traffic stats

I think the Little Red / bmi regional / Monarch cut-backs finally drop out of the rolling 12 months from now on, too.

[Bagso]

http://www.traveldailymedia.com/235074/hainan-airlines-to-hit-the-road-to-promote-manchester-beijing-route/

Hainan Roadshow re Manchester

[Ametyst1]

Dreadful experience arriving at Manchester. Flew with Flybe from Paris CdG. Flight arrived 75 minutes late due to earlier aircraft problems. Well, these things happen.

Saw plenty of available stands on T3 so all looking good. The aircraft then proceeds to by Terminal 2 and parks remote between a Gainjet and Jet2 737.

Seat belt signs off and pax start getting up. After 10 minutes the captain comes on to announce that for some unknown reason the aircraft has been parked remote and we will be coached to the terminal. The problem was that nobody at Menzies had the foresight to arrange the coach's to collect us. Captain says they will send 2 coaches.

After 35 minutes 1 coach arrives with the second one arriving 15 minutes after that. The coach then sauntered slowly to Terminal 3 via a tour of The airport. The coach deposited off at the furthest point possible by were the American Flights normally park and we then had to walk the full length of Terminal 3 to get to passport control.

The annoying thing was that 7 stands were vacant at Terminal. So already delayed passengers were even more delayed. I still do not understand why we did not enter an entry point closer to passport control. At every stage, it seemed to be how can we delay these passengers even more! Not a happy bunch of passengers to be honest.

[The96er]

The problem was that nobody at Menzies had the foresight to arrange the coach's to collect us.

Menzies or any other handling agent do NOT organize buses for remote stands. If the airport allocate a remote stand, then it is they who are responsible for arranging transport to/from the terminal.

[Ametyst1]

Well, it is the airport's fault then. Either way, it was not a good advert for Manchester Airport.

[chaps1954]

You are such a cheery chap does anything nice ever happen to
you at Manchester

[Ametyst1]

I am a cheery chap as it happens but it soon disappears when I come across incompetence. Nothing good happened to me at Manchester Airport last night nor for the other 110 passengers.

The delay all had a knock on effect which meant I got home at 1am instead of 11:30pm. So, after a long day, I hope you understand !y displeasure.

I hope things improve as bussing will become de rigeur when the terminal development begins.

[MKY661]

I hope things improve as bussing will become de rigeur when the terminal development begins.

I've flown from MAN 35 times, and the only time I've been bussed was my Air Atlanta flight to Malaga in 2001. Airbridge or outside walk for the rest.

[roverman]

Amethyst, you clearly had a poor experience this week, something went very wrong, or more likely a combination of things. I am sure that if you make a complaint to the airport they will follow up but of course that won't put right what happened for you but it might help prevent it happening again. Bussing is a fact of life at many airports - I was bussed out to Flybe at CDG despite lots of empty gates there, but it should be slick.

[Mr A Tis]

I've flown out of MAN maybe over 300 times.
Many times a great experience, but also had some howlers.
All I can say is don't bother complaining to MA. The Management are not interested in "moaning" passengers and will only respond to airlines that make complaints.
In the unlikely event the airport responds to a complaint they will usually blame somebody else instead of taking responsibility for the whole shooting match.
I can only speak from personal experience.

I'd suggest you complain to Flybe and ask them for an explanation & for them to
follow up with MA.

[LAX_LHR]

Easyjet have released stage 1 of their winter timetable.

The main bits I've noticed are:

Copenhagen increases to 12 weekly from the current 10 weekly (twice daily except Thu and Sat)

Keflavik increases to daily for the majority of the winter timetable.

Berlin increases to 9 weekly up from 8 weekly.

Malaga is 5 weekly which I'm sure is an increase compared to last winter.

Alicante remains 6 weekly which again I'm sure is an increase compared to last winter

Gibraltar is new for the winter