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Manchester-3

Old 25th Mar 2021, 00:58
  #361 (permalink)  
 
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Wasn't being patronising, the terminology is relatively new to common usage, and regarding brand, it's like sex/gender and weight/mass, they're easy to conflate. IAG OpCos are BA/ Iberia (+ Air Europa) /Aer Lingus /Vueling.... Level am not 100% on as they have a French and Austrian AOC as well as Spanish A330s operated by Iberia. The BA brand encompasses ComAir, SunAir as franchisees as well as BA CityFlyer as a subsidiary. As well as the independent Stobart using the Aer Lingus brand, Air Nostrom use Iberia's!

It should be possible for Aer Lingus to fly long haul out of MAN even if BA object, but going forward I suspect that there will be a conversation at IAG level about Aer Lingus hurting BA feed to US long haul if they make a success of it, which I truly hope they do. It depends how badly both are hurting given I think this summer will be a write off as well. But in terms of what's better for MAN, it's Aer Lingus non stop of course, but I support the option of the many other MAN-LHR-JFK options per day once we get flying again. I really want MAN to succeed, just not at the expense of friends and colleagues who are in a very bad place.

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Old 25th Mar 2021, 07:21
  #362 (permalink)  
 
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SOF

BAW have been publicly rebuked both in The House of Commons & in Select Committee concerning their shameful treatment of staff.

Terminology use will not obscure the fact that MAN presents far less of a problem for "friends and colleagues" than IAG domiciled in Madrid paying its taxes there too.

The notes concerning operating affiliations are useful though so howzabout a listing of the shareholdings/shareholders in IAG/BAW as that maybe prove interesting too.

The then BAW management/shareholders sold out long ago to further their own interests with no thought for employees so hardly a fault of ANY airport either.

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Old 25th Mar 2021, 10:24
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Ownership is a side issue and a legally complex one, that's a lil bit of "whatabouttery". My key point is there are tens of thousands of staff working for a UK based airline at risk of redundancy. If you want to claim they're really Spanish owned then go ahead, it doesn't change anything. Nissan are Japanese owned but have thousands of UK based jobs.

"Terminology use will not obscure the fact that MAN presents far less of a problem for "friends and colleagues" than IAG domiciled in Madrid paying its taxes there too". I don't understand what this means.
When you complain that BA sold out to further the interests of shareholders with no thought for staff that's false. Air France and KLM merged, Lufthansa got hold of Swiss and Austrian, in that competitive environment BA and Iberia came together to stay competitive. The might of IAG allowed cost savings which allowed them to stay competitive and invest. Aer Lingus also sold out. Medium sized European flag carriers are not competitive on their own, especially against govt owned foreign comptitors like the ME3. Job cuts today often ensures survival tomorrow, it's harsh and cruel on a personal
level but time and time again ends up being the right move. The very existence of Ryanair caused Aer Lingus to cut and slash and destroy wages all so we could fly for a decent fare.
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Old 25th Mar 2021, 10:57
  #364 (permalink)  
 
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Hopefully Manchester will capitalise on A TO A destinations where countries at either end are all vaccinated, the US springs to mind if that country reaches a certain critical level.
Getting back to what I thought was Navpi's original point and leaving the BA dog fight, it is likely that the earliest places to open up will be those with good controls and high vaccination levels. Is this going to be a issue going forward for the hub connections and favour point to point flights, and how will this affect Manchester
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Old 25th Mar 2021, 11:17
  #365 (permalink)  
 
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SWBKB

Good & succinct point out.

My own thoughts... Analysts here are all over the show in the attempted mitigation of LHR .
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Old 25th Mar 2021, 11:41
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SWBKCB

His original point wasn’t ignored. The reply was that some of the routes that MAN has are only viable because the destination is a hub. So if hub and spoke op’s become ‘difficult’ then MAN can probably say goodbye to several of its links and a scaling back of most others.

Any capitalisation on corridors/traffic lights status will likely be by IT tour ops, and the MAN based carriers.
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Old 25th Mar 2021, 13:48
  #367 (permalink)  
 
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Speculation that British Airways maybe getting ready for an announcement on Manchester - Pakistan route from mid-end April
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Old 25th Mar 2021, 21:52
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That, as a standalone, would be curious. Odd the original LGW connection for Pakistan never came to fruition..
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Old 25th Mar 2021, 22:05
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.....and on top of VS already on Islamabad? Maybe they'll look at Karachi or Lahore instead?

Will this be overkill?

The only positive is that, even in these horrendous days, the Islamabad route managed a load factor of around 75% on my calculations in February.
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Old 25th Mar 2021, 22:38
  #370 (permalink)  
 
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Maybe you need to see it more as BA/IAG ‘taking a tilt at VS’ ! - that’s assuming it happens, which I doubt.
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Old 25th Mar 2021, 23:20
  #371 (permalink)  
 
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The big ME3 have all been stopped funnelling passengers from Pakistan. There is clearly a demand as can be seen by the numbers flying out. We shall see.
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Old 25th Mar 2021, 23:35
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Clearly. With international travel from the UK illegal, except for essential reasons, with most routes at a tiny fraction of their normal levels - these load factors are amazing.
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Old 26th Mar 2021, 08:59
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I'm a bit more pessimistic that short haul will bounce back sooner than long haul.
With only 11% of Europeans vaccinated (compared to 50% UK). Even the vaccine leading UK ,it will be August at the earliest before the UK will have vaccinated anything like the sufficient number of under 50s to enable relaxation. Even then, I can see a combo of testing & quarantine on arrival back to the UK. That won't make short European holiday trips viable for many.
On the other hand there is business & substantial family requirements for long haul that the inconvenience of testing/quarantine on arrival both ends is worthwhile. I can see CX, HU & SIA for instance re-introducing a limited schedule, along with the EI US routes. If the alleged Islamabad load factors mentioned above are true, that reinforces the family travel demand, despite quarantine rules.
This scenario is more realistic than expecting a return to multiple Alicante & Malaga's this side of October.
There is also the huge cargo demand from the longhaul services that would contribute to their viability.
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Old 26th Mar 2021, 10:19
  #374 (permalink)  
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Is-ba-mad? As well as Virgin, PIA are still flying MAN-ISB by proxy at least once weekly using a Hi Fly A330. PIA for all their troubles will still surely capture a good deal of the home market. For BA to pop up on a stand alone MAN long-haul route would be strange indeed. But these are strange times and the opportunity to use semi-redundant resources anywhere must be tempting.
Glad to see the MAN forum is stayin' alive on a familar diet of BA-bashing and 'give cargo a chance'. I've got cargo in my belly and a license for my telly and nothing's gonna bring me down!
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Old 26th Mar 2021, 13:35
  #375 (permalink)  
 
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MAN-ISB was a longstanding BA route against PIA for years, ended up on the B747-400 from T3 in the end. That must have been a busy boarding gate. Was a LGW based B747-236B for a time routing LGW-MAN-ISB-MAN-LGW, BA119 and BA118 I think.

Last edited by Skipness One Foxtrot; 26th Mar 2021 at 17:11.
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Old 26th Mar 2021, 14:52
  #376 (permalink)  
 
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Was 128, but routed LHR-MAN-ISB and v/v. Was an absolute nightmare.

As for the BA bashing, I'm getting involved in this a bit late. They abandoned MAN and all the regions and went very London-centric. Our P2P traffic was pretty good with BAR, we had the JFK flight as well which did well, but Waterwiorld got greedy and jealous.

MAN built T3 to cater for them, and it worked. Now it has been infested by LCC.

They deliberately killed the AA routes as well, which were doing rather too well.

Now they've frozen payments into a pension scheme they had previously taken a "holiday" from.

Lovely company.
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Old 26th Mar 2021, 17:19
  #377 (permalink)  
 
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This is very well written, c/o Crosswind from "another place" (we can't mention? I think, if not then I'll edit and amend)
The comments ref American are spot on IMHO, this person is way more eloquent than I have been but I agree with the analysis.

It’s perfect sense to the rest of us, but sadly most Manchester related topics are fraught with emotion. At the expense of facts.

Manchester is a big volume market. No doubt. And it’s a sizeable Trans Atlantic market. No doubt.
But the flows on Trans Atlantic are largely UK outbound. And focused on price sensitive customers. No doubt.

Yes there is some business. And some premium leisure. No doubt.

But aircraft are assets that you use where they make the most profit. For the size of the market Manchester has done well over the years on the US routes. But the hard truth is this... in isolation routes initially did well. American’s ORD route started in 1986, by 1992 it was their first European MD-11 flight, plus a second daily 767. Reportedly their most profitable European route. As time went on more US airlines came... but because people weren’t flying to Chicago, Atlanta, Washington etc they just tore up each other’s markets. That’s the problem. All the different US hub routes just compete with each other - despite looking like they’re going to different places, the final destinations of UK passengers are generally the same. So the very profitable American flight in 1992 was loss making in 2019 because people leaked over other hubs.

And many here herald Thomas Cook as a resounding success. And maybe it was, but they picked the dense point-to-point mainly UK origin routes, which badly hurt the US carriers’ hub traffic. And BA hub traffic via LHR for that matter.

It’s a finite market... just because your incumbents like United, Delta, American were all busy and profitable to their hubs... they’re not immune to someone else adding a load of hub-bypass capacity. When that happened the sums didn’t add up for many of them.

As to the BA bashing... they had their own terminal at Manchester. And a sizeable fleet based there. In the late 1990s mainly brand new 737-300s and EMB-145s. Serving mainly business destinations, at the time that’s what BA did. Leisure was for charter airlines. As the low cost and leisure airlines grew... BA tried to defend their traditional turf; Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Edinburgh, Milan, Zurich. The problem was that BA were really only doing point to point... whereas the likes of Swissair, Lufthansa and KLM could capitalise on their hubs to make their competing service work.

If BA had dropped all the regional/business stuff and shifted to the premium leisure market in the early 2000s, maybe they’d still be there. But even 20 years later they’re only just going into premium leisure properly at Heathrow. Until very recently it was confined to the odd weekend charter and Gatwick.

BA didn’t close their hub at Manchester because it was too profitable. On long-haul they carried on JFK to the bitter end, and attempted Barbados, Hong Kong, Islamabad, Los Angeles, and Orlando. It’d say Manchester-Los Angeles in 1993 on a 767 was pretty out there. If they weren’t interested in Manchester why would they bother starting it?

American Airlines are said to have sabotaged their Manchester flights. Well over the years, they flew to Chicago mainly, and Philadelphia after the merger. But they also tried Boston, New York JFK, Dallas/Ft Worth and Miami... often more than one attempt at each route. Is that an airline that wasn’t trying? I think AA really have given Manchester their all over the years. More than any other carrier, AA were desperate for it to work. They messed around at the end, but you have to assume because it wasn’t making money. Or it would have been protected in terms of equipment used and cancellations. Even United are now gone and not coming back under their current plans.

As far as BA interfering with their partners to withdraw from Manchester... In the 1990s the Qantas Manchester flights came via Heathrow in both directions, and the Cathay Pacific flights were via Amsterdam/Frankfurt/Zurich. So of course when they entered partnership with BA they stopped. Why would you fly a three-quarter empty 747 on a 1 hour leg when your partner has regular flights on that route? Perfect business sense for the airlines, and not massive difference to the passenger. These 1990s era flights were multi-stop anyway. But it annoyed the spotters who wanted to see Qantas, or Cathay Pacific aircraft at Manchester. On the flip side probably improved the contribution of BAs O&D reliant services to those places at the time.

It would be great for T3 British Airways to still be a hub. But I think we have to accept that the reason it’s not now, is due to market forces and evolution. Not sinister intent on BA’s part. To continue to assert that doesn’t aid credibility.

After all, after the sale of the Manchester network to Flybe, did things get any better? And that was an airline that was almost exclusively non-London.

I just believe we should move on from attacking any airline that didn’t make Manchester work as a failure on their part. Some have made it work, some have done very well, others didn’t make it work. But many of the latter gave it a good go over the years.
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Old 26th Mar 2021, 18:19
  #378 (permalink)  
 
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That is a way too balanced response for here skip.

One correction though. I wouldn’t class BA leisure routes to be ‘premium leisure’ these days, unless sat in club. Premium leisure BA flights were back firmly in GB days.
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Old 28th Mar 2021, 21:45
  #379 (permalink)  
 
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Aer Lingus A321NXLR due in Monday afternoon. Shakedown flight and a jolly for the press?
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Old 29th Mar 2021, 09:12
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I’m afraid it’s not the XLR. Aer Lingus’ XLR’s are not due for delivery until 2023. I wouldn’t be surprised to see an XLR or two based at MAN though. I wonder would EI consider going eastbound and Middle East bound from MAN?
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