MANCHESTER - 2
 

Who will be first...............

What a starter for 10!!!!!!!!!!:}

easyjet noway may be flybe and one or two ryanair off peak ?

ADQ
 

What am I flying on?
 

Can we also have the "I am flying to xxx, what a/c will it be????? Rapidly shoved to the 'Spotty Balcony' pleeease"
watp,iktch

chiglet...as a rule thats exactly what happens. However, we dont always get to them straight away. Occasionally a few are borderline spottish and may be of interest to aviation professionals, as a rule those posts will stay.

Doh ! when I saw "Manchester 2" I thought we were in line for a new airport !.

Now For Something Completely Different
 

..... Like a sensible post maybe?

So to get the ball rolling, I have heard a faint rumour that AA are looking to increase to 4 flights a day ex MAN. Anyone care to add the details?

I take it you mean 4 destinations

G-I-B

Apparently DFW is back on the list of possibilities, reflected in the fact they are recruiting part time ground staff.

EasyJet
 

When you look at the destinations that EZY serve from the UK regions (LPL, NCL, EMA, BRS), they are mainly destinations that are already well served from MAN. It is only at the London Airports that they offer more variety in their routes. There's nothing to indicate what destinations they would offer should they ever take the step of operating out of MAN but when there was a rumour going around that they had applied for slots back in 2004, the destinations that they were considering serving from MAN sounded all too familar. AGP, ALC, FAO, BFS... These are all routes that are served in abundance already and we don't need any more of these. The presence of LS, WW and ZB is enough to provide a competitive, low fare service to most of the destinations that EZY serve from LPL and if they were just to replicate these routes out of MAN then the airport isn't really gaining anything from this in my opinion. MAN needs someone like FR to come in and have a go at operating services to new destinations that currently aren't served from MAN. They've gone a good job of giving less popular destinations a go at LPL and I doubt EZY would do this as effectively. But what are the chances of Ryanair making Manchester a hub? Very slim me thinks!

FlyZB - the first sensible and intelligent post so far......

What most of the rest are about, I haven't got a clue.

I think MAN's reached its peak as a major international airport. The management are deluded by constantly talking about becoming a major intercontinental airport, and 'hoping' to attract services to the Far East, China, Australasia, West Coast USA and even South America....!

They still think that they can attract profitable services to South America FFS!!!! They must be mad.

Sorry for having a sense of humour !

MAN or EGGC, has not reached its peak as an international airport, there are still major gaps in its portfolio, notably China, Japan, South Africa, India and direct west coast USA. I think I would agree re the comment about south America being a non starter, other than charters to the Brazil coastal resorts.

Exactly MAN777, but TBH I don't see how any reasonable longhaul growth will occur whilst BA are using the LHR/LGW flights as longhaul feeders.

AUTOGLIDE

The yields from regional airports are not enough to justify many airlines starting and running profitable longhaul routes from Manchester IMHO.

If you take BA's LHR op's a lot of pax come from all over the world to connect with the longhaul flights. Manchester does not have the feeder network for any airline to sustain a operation like this. Not as many pax as people think come from the London area to fly on BA flights. Infact i would hazzard a guess if LHR was in Manchester most pax would not notice a difference!

MAN is having a tough time, bless it.

They tried dropping prices last year but still the pax didn't come. Pax figures are down on last year for the first time in living memory. Rumour has it that prices are still not low enough for FR, and that EZY couldn't get the right slots to make their schedule work.

BA never could attract enough pax to sit in the front of their planes out of MAN, so the yield will always be too low. BA's other costs are allegedly still too high, and they are gradually withering away in T3, which is now handling other non-One World airlines e.g. WW and soon BD.

Far East and other LH carriers won't fly to MAN because their pax want to fly to London, not a regional airport.

MAN has great people but as an airport it's too complicated landside and too tortuous and congested inside the terminals, not to mention the congestion and poor state of repair of the airside area.

Compared to other up-and-coming airports like LPL and EMA, MAN can't compete for ease of use, simplicity etc., which is what passengers want. They don't want to walk past more and more silly shops, then walk miles to a gate past broken travelators, then be bussed for another 15 mins to an aircraft parked another mile away in Altrincham.

Still, they could always read Plane Talk on the way, and marvel at the senior management's latest medals and fat-cat pay rises.

Momentary Lapse.

I'm afraid you are slightly off on yr comments re BA never filling the front.
In the days when the BAR B737s had a C cabin, they were frequently full to Amsterdam, Frankfurt & Rome.
The E145s have seen all that wither away.
However, you will see AFR & DLH frequently overbooked in C class on their multiple daily rotations out of MAN.
Usually the DLH Frankfurt flights have more people sat in C class than the entire BACON 145.
However, I agree with the rest. Shoddy terminal (T1) up & down different levels to get anywhere, not user friendly.....and the state of the airside infrastructure.......:eek:
Had the misfortune to use Stansted recently though, more like the Arndale centre. Asked the BAA lady where the exec lounges were, as there is nowhere to sit ( except in cafes & bars).......er there is only 1 & you can only use it if you are using certain gates. Very poor I said, well fly from somewhere else next time she replied. Cor blimey those sutherners are reet 'ard,:ouch:

ML,
What can I say?
No Long Haul.....yep, Malaysian has gone. Replaced by Etihad,7x per week, Quatar, now 7x week. Emirates......cruddy service..only the ONLY HD B777 ELR 435 seats and getting an AVERAGE of 400 pax plus 15-20 tonnes of freight.....oh I forgot, they have a SECOND daily rotation.
I've flown from EMA....Nuff Sed :} I've worked at Liverpool :cool: I suggest that you look at Pax Throughput and Total Movements. THEN look at Apron space, Stand allocation, Turnround, WIP [Work in Progress]. I agree that the "Travel[n]ators] are a PITA, but the last time I flew from T2, it was clean and quick. BTW, out of interest, MAN "Tries" not to park "REMOTE"
Inevitably, some a/c have to. What's the prob? Palma, Dusseldorf,Franfurt ALL use "Remote Parking". At least at Manch, you're not herded into a pen and isolated :=
watp,iktch

But a full aircraft does not always mean the route makes a lot of money :ugh: :ugh: .

Unfortunatly BA would rather all there PAX flew through the Hole that is LHR than fly via manchester. A large number of BA pax used to fly through LHR just to have the proper club class european product instead of the product BACX classed as club.

You aren't seriously suggesting that Emirates introduced a second service as a charitable gesture are you? Fact of the matter is that BA's overheads are much higher than many of the Middle and Far Eastern long haul carriers (certainly in the way they calculate the way costs are distributed around the company) and therefore the revenue that they need to generate on a particular flight to make it profitable is likely to be higher than say Emirates or Qatar.

BA's problem was compounded by the fact that their business class seats were much more likely to be filled by travellers on a point-to-point itinerary, rather than flying from MAN via places such as AMS or FRA onwards.

I often return to the example of Lufthansa - years ago they seemed to treat Munich in a similar way to how BA treat Manchester. However in recent times they have changed it into a significant long haul hub in its own right, with the following on today's departure board, mainly with A340s: Newark, LAX, Chicago, Boston, Charlotte, Washington, JFK, Tokyo, San Francisco, Beijing, Tehran, Delhi, Shanghai, Hong Kong, plus a much wider range of feeder flights from around Europe. Interestingly their mix of foreign airlines is very similar to MAN - several US carriers, Emirates, Qatar and Etihad from the Middle East, etc, plus the mix of charter flights.

However in pax numbers Munich are ahead - 15.69 million in 1996, 23.13 in 2000, a drop back in 2001-2 like everywhere else, up to 28.62 million in 2005. In comparison, Manchester had 22.4 million in 2005 up from 14.65 million in 2005 - the difference in growth over the period where Lufthansa ramped things up is stark.

My take, although there are many others here far more qualified to comment, is that Lufthansa are succeeding at Munich for 3 main reasons - they have built a large number of feeder routes up with CRJs (50 and 70 seats), which have then progressed to larger aircraft allowing the smaller ones to be used on new destinations. These feeder routes have been used to build a significant long haul portfolio to the extent that they have got into a virtuous circle - growing short haul feeding into growing long haul. The second reason is that they have used their Star Alliance partners to build the range of services. This is in stark contrast to the way in which BA have used their One World partners at Manchester - if rumour is to be believed they have been more interested in getting them out of the way so as to allow more feed into Heathrow. Thirdly, Germany is a lot less focussed on one city generally, compared to the London focus in the UK.

Whether things have now gone too far for BA ever to consider trying the Munich model at MAN is debatable - I would say probably. It would certainly take several years patience and a large investment to turn things round, and BA (like many UK companies these days) seems to focussed on short term gain to ever consider such a plan.

BA and Manchester
 

I need to try and add some balance to this debate following Railgun's assertion. As a Mancunian who has worked at MAN, LHR and LGW and a regular traveller through all 3 airports I do feel qualified to comment...
Even prior to T5, with the exception of Pier 3 the terminal facilities offered at LHR to all BA passengers range from very good to excellent - how long since you have been airside in LHR T1 International? The Premium lounges have had huge investment and are unrecognisable from previous years. LGW NT is now almost 20 years old but still looks fresher, more spacious and more appealing than any of the MAN terminals including T3 which is much newer.
You say that BA prefers to fly its passengers through LHR - this Sunday it offers a total capacity of 965 seats, effectively unchanged since the days of 10 x 99 seat BAC1-11s 25 years or more ago when there was also a full range of European 2 class services so I do not buy the "diversion over London" argument. Finally consider which of the airlines serving MAN makes the most money for its owners (which includes me!). If that is its business judgement, it is fine by me (and them!).

So would you rather fly BA via LHR to get to AMS or take a direct KLM flight?

Railgun, just tried it on BA website - Nonstop flights offered first, connect over LHR not even on the front screen.

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Fri 19 May 2006 from Manchester to John F Kennedy (New York)
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Porky Speedpig

That comes as a shock to be honest and i take back my incorrect comments on it.

Railgun.....

So why would you go double-daily
If you couldnt get the yield??????

Earth to Planet Railgun come-in....


MM

ManchesterMan

Because if BA sold MAN-JFK more for throught traffic they could go double daily.

Search on BA.com for flights to JFK from EDI, GLA, ABZ even the IOM the first fair on the IOM-JFK return is one trying to get you to return to LHR then go to LTN for your IOM flight!

Airlines do, when CX introduced the 3rd daily flt to LHR, the airline was quite happy to make a loss on it as it was deemed more marketable/presdigious or whatever to have 3 daily flts to LHR than 2. It is now the case with the 4th flt, quite happy to make a loss etc etc.

I guess they must be happy because they are certainly making a loss on it, that's for sure.(must be where my profit share went)

The last time I flew home from HKG I would guess that at least 75% of the pax on the LHR-MAN flt had just got off the CX flt (and it happens more often than not). When CX had a pax flt at Man, a lot went out via LHR and back in to MAN, this was due to the poor slot time that CX insisted on out of MAN.

Unfortunately with airlines like CX they only see the UK as London and nothing more, as I believe the largest Chineese community in the UK is Manchester region you'd think they (CX) would make more of a go of it and not just fly to London!

We live in hope I guess.:ugh:

Yes, I flew on the 3rd daily CX service from HKG-LHR, not long after it was introduced. Every pax had 3 seats & loads more to spare. In fact most of the pax were MAN/AMS bound as a late departure out of SYD caused us to miss our (then) direct AMS/MAN flt. In fact without the MAN pax on board the LHR flt, the crew would have outnumbered the passengers.

AA @ MAN
 

From the rumours I have heard, AA are looking at starting Manchester to Dallas three times a week and Manchester to Los Angeles three times a week.

Does anyone know anymore? They seem to be up to something as they are recruitng more ground staff.

Would make a lot of sense. A true west coast link has been missing for ages as everyone is too aware, and the connections offered through Dallas are nothing short of immense.

EZY
 

On the easyJet front - there are some routes that they could operate from current bases. Namely Basle, Berlin and Milan. Could also open new markets namely Morocco/Croatia/Baltics and maybe the Italian Islands in the Summer (Sicily/Sardinia). - Just a thought!

Air Taxes at Manchester
 

Anybody know why airlines charge different tax rates out of MAN.

Example:-
Man - PMI Sunday 2 July
BMIBABY £13.95
Jet2 £16.00
Monarch £25.03

LPL - Pmi Same date
E.J. £5.00
As every passenger has to pay the goverment £5.0 to fly,do liverpool airport
not charge E.J. for using the airport,or are there taxes hidden in the air fare.
In reply to TOLEDOASHLEY, note BA fly to Berlin, and BA & Alitalia fly to Milan

Regards PeakP

Thomsonfly are due to start scheduled flights to Marakesh this winter ex Manchester and GB Airways I think start at end of October

Whilst I am on can anybody give a reason as to why the Bangladesh now operates via Heathow and not on to New York as I am hearing several different stories

G-I-B

"Taxes and Charges" emphasis on the charges bit. Airlines can throw pretty much anything they like in there.

Bangladesh Flights
 

To G.I.B.

FAA refused bangladash permission to fly from Man due to security issue.
Flights had to go via Brussels. May return in June to Man.
This is only what I heard.

Theres nothing wrong with competition

toledoashley

I agree, but tell that to BA. Time to go and watch the cup final

There is no future for BA @ MAN

toledoashley

There is no future for BA anywhere in the UK but London Heathrow come 2008.