Why not Manchester? Manchester too is a great city why should London be the only place in UK and Manchester has a big catchment area that will make the route a success.

And sure, the area around Prestwick is lovely. (Hurts to say)

Doesn't make a market though does it?

Economies of scale, London is much much bigger than Manchester.

My understanding was that the Monarch service was not a success that is why it was dropped.

Manchester is now delivering massive increases with 25M plus so can support many of the routes London can and is proving it with upto 40 new routes starting next year

Ian

The Manchester catchment area is huge covering the Midlands right up to The Lakes and as far as Edinburgh and across to and including Yorkshire. That coupled with the very well-healed areas of Cheshire and North Yorkshire make Granada an ideal market for UK city breaks. MAN has grown considerably in recent years with 'niche' routes such as OPO, VRN etc. being an important part of that market. Perhaps take a trip to the North West when you are back in the UK - you might be pleasantly surprised.

AerRyan, yes you are right London is bigger than Manchester. For the reasons given above there is every reason to believe that GRX has the potential to be a very successful route form MAN based on the demographic of MAN catchment area. EasyJet's track record of growth from MAN demonstrates clearly that they know what they are doing with only a couple of routes having been pulled since they started operating from there. EZY do their homework, they wouldn't have started the route unless they had the evidence to know that it will be supported.

MAN-GRX
 

Delighted with the new EZY MAN-GRX announcement and I'm looking forward to using it. Its great to see passengers having the choice to travel to the wonderful city of Granada from either the north or south of England. EasyJet know what they are doing and based on their track record from MAN I'm sure it will be a success.:D

AerRyan I would stick to your local patch!

AerRyan, DomyDom has made the point very well about MAN's extensive catchment area of 22m people, and a good number of these surprise, surprise, seem to enjoy visiting Spain for holidays or city breaks.

Are you seriously suggesting that easyjet don't research their potential routes properly to assess which might be viable? Perhaps they drew lots as to which UK airports to serve Granada from!

AerRyan I think you will find Manchester is bigger than the all the scottish airport put together

Ian

Phalcon - EZY announced LGW-GRX too - 3 days weekly.....

GRX has much more to offer than just visits to Granada. It is a lovely small airport; much more customer friendly than AGP. It is very useful for access to the southern coast east of Malaga; even Malaga itself. Flights may be at much more convent times and better prices, and certainly the processing through the airport is much less hassle than AGP. The same is true for using Jerez or Seville instead of AGP. Pax need to be a little more lateral thinking in their trip planning; they can reap great benefits.

@LGWAlan... Yee Ha! Thank you so much for that great news. I had missed it because El Pais In English the Spanish online Daily newspaper failed to include it in its listings!
For me and my OH its brilliant news... we have a teeny weeny townhouse more or less under the approach path to Rw 09.
AGP is a bitch to get to from Granada by public transport... no direct train route (never has been!) and while there are several buses per day, only one a day each way serves the villages and towns en-route... so its a taxi or hire car... When we were expecting visitors, I used to monitor Granada Approach listening out for the handoff then go out to my car and take a steady 70kph drive to the airport, invariably arriving just as the aircraft touched down.
@RAT5 Totally agree... Everything you say about the airport is correct; wonderful city wonderful province.
Local bus companies need to liaise more with the airport authorities however... There is a direct service to Granada City and a couple of other minor towns and villages but the Inter-City bus co. ALSA do not go there at all... and never have done...

Rat 5 There's also GIB that serves the Costa Del Sol too. When we travel there we tend to use GIB as it's much easier for us :)

GRX from Gatwick would figure more like to have a good chance of sticking simply because sheer levels of Spanish people living in South East.
Worked in Manchester for a year in 2014 and found level of Europeans from Mediterranean well below London.

As for populations, while claiming that Man does cover a huge area is great, I wonder what the % who actually fly during the year is like.

Just using the different businesses worked with in Manchester and South East I would suggest probably 1 in 10 people in Manchester flew other than for Summer holidays, in the South East probably 1 in 4 from personal experience.

racedo, EZY are a hard headed business and I'm sure they have done their research. I think the figures alone for MAN, although not yet at LGW levels show decent growth and the potential for more given its second runway. MAN also benefits from excellent transport links given the proximity of the M6/M56 and main line rail, as well as many intercontinental connections from the USA and Middle/ Far East. Regarding the population's propensity to fly during the year it all depends on the population you are working with. My experience is exactly the opposite to yours in that most people I know in the Manchester area fly at least once a month, also there is a large Spanish population that attend Manchester University who regularly fly back to Spain. There are also many high tech and engineering businesses that attract a lot of EU graduates. One thing to keep in mind is that if you want to get anywhere in Europe from Manchester, it tends to be easier to fly directly rather than change in London for Eurostar hence we tend to have to fly pretty much by default. I hope this helps illuminate.

We can discuss London Vs Manchester for hours and there are different trends in the populations and the way they travel but look.... if MAN can support 3 daily A380 with just one of the Middle East 3 that use the airport then I reckon a two weekly GRX on a low cost will be a piece of cake. The opposite end of Spain maybe but MAN and EZY manage to support BIO and that route, incidentally, is patronised mainly by the Spanish.

2016 passenger figures

Passengers: 74,452,487 +6.6%
Load factor: 91.5% -0.1 p.p.
easyJet Media Centre

Passenger numbers grew 15% last December

Crikey FR are 43 Million Pax above that................... figured U2 would start to catch up.

When does EasyJet get their first A320neo?