Roverman, is MAN now faced with stormy seas on the Atlantic as well as the BREXIT icebergs and Trump guns you so eloquently referred to a while back?

I think most of these stormy seas are caused by Trump as tourism has hit the iceberg in the states
as I believe sales are down 30 to 40% from all over the world. I can see a lot of people at Disney being laid off in the near future

And possibly a case of over capacity, with the likes of TCX coming in and spoiling the market for the established carriers, at the very time when we have the "perfect political / economic storm".

Is there anymore news of BA taking over the American routes to JFK and ORD?

With AA apparently winding down the ORD service, this makes sense.

It was about time a British operator stepped in as US operators service is awful, a friend of mine flew one way with AA and returned with TCX, said TCX far far better and cheaper

MANFOD - my post which you refer to was indeed about The Battle of The Atlantic which looks now set to rage for some time to come. The depth-charges of VS/DL versus the torpedoes of Thomas Cook. These are now the main players who may yet dodge the biggest icebergs of Trump and Brexit if they pull back the engines from FULL AHEAD. Some others may be sunk, perhaps those without good tactical manoeuvres or a clear course to steer, rather than a lack of firepower.

Elsewhere - Europe and the East out of MAN looks to have more resilience and could be lifeboats for the UK based carriers suffering losses on the Atlantic. I suspect we won't see the heady double-digit growth of last year repeated for a while. But it now takes less than 4% growth to add a million passengers each year and so expect big volumes still.

With such a cut in USA capacity, I decided to have a cursory look at Twitter, and it's actually quite bad how much leakage there is outside of our area. These tweets are in the past week.

Now, I know these numbers will not set the world alight, but, this was more a look that if these 1-3 people on Twitter are doing it, how many not on Twitter/not reporting it are doing it:

- 2 tweets of people flying MAN-LHR-DOH with BA/QR, despite there being 16 flights a week MAN-DOH on the exact same airline.

-3 people traveling MAN-LHR-PHL on BA/AA , departing about 0835, despite a MAN-PHL on AA, on the same aircraft, around the same time as the LHR-PHL flight.

-2 people flying MAN-AMS-DXB, apparently flying Emirates from AMS. Despite 21 weekly A388 from MAN

like I say, this is a brief look, and appreciate 2 of the 3 examples are eastbound, which is a strong market anyway, but, makes you think, it's a shame to see our own USA flights struggling when it seems many from this area are instead bolstering LHR/AMS and their long haul.

While we don't know the mitigating factors as to why these people chose to fly from LHR/AMS, I picked these 3 examples as they have the same airline, and in some cases, the same aircraft flying onwards from the hub. If it's price that's the issue, then one wonders why it's MAN that gets the chop and not the much cheaper alternatives further afield?

I suppose it boils down to frustration that MAN will go from one of the strongest summer offerings to the USA in its history, directly into possibly one of the weakest winters in its history, one extreme to the other. I know there is a lot going on in the world, but, when you consider the 2 extremes, something doesn't quite add up in my eyes, and I can't help think that while there is turbulence in the industry, I get the feeling MAN is also being sacrificed to protect flights elsewhere.......

The long way round to cheap air fares
 

Price is the issue methinks, LAX LHR. I hear similar anecdotes from those who have trawled Skyscanner and found considerably cheaper long haul (and sometimes short haul) out of London airports. Northerners are canny with their brass, we are told. And yes that means if they can get a cheaper flight from or via London, they will. Frustrating all round, as we are told that yields are higher for airlines out of LHR yet fares are cheaper. Uh? Airlines pay 3 to 4 times the airport charges compared to MAN but still dump the back end of flights on to the market through internet consolidators, having filled the front with execs and celebs who frequent the LHR catchment and don't bother to check the price.

Well the ATL reduction is a great disappointment.
Cutting down losing the flexibility of a daily service is the thin end of the wedge.
No better way to lose passengers.
Far from three full days, they are going to end up with 3 half full flights a week.

Pedestrian route between The Station / Terminals and Hilton / Crowne Plaza / Clayton is in much need of improvement.

It doesn't feel at all safe or well signposted

That's why you ring for a taxi to take you to the hotels, free. Whether this service is signposted enough is another matter.

New carrier called Lipican Aer (will also be marketed as Aer Southeast) have applied for a 4 weekly MAN-WAT with Saab 340. Also applied for daily LTN-WAT and 3 weekly BHX-WAT.

You are always intriguing roverman. Do I take it this is a reference to the US carriers AA & UA?

I share Mr A Tis's concern about a reduction in frequency can lead to more empty seats on the days flights do operate as some customers, particularly business travellers, look for more reliable options where there are daily or more services. The only possible spin that can be put on it I suppose is that reduced frequencies allow the route to continue, hopefully until circumstances improve. Losing a route completely is harder to get it re-instated.

This is common, it's why MAN-FRA-xyz is often cheaper from the UK than German based fare buckets. In F/C classes, it's where the term ex-EU comes from, where people take advantage of premium fares offered at vastly reduced rates in other markets. We see London based travelers taking LHR-DUB-LHR-xyz-LHR-DUB where the added cost and hassle of the extra leg is balanced against saving a huge amount on ticket price. Anecdotally you're right, it's often cheaper via LHR than MAN but you're not going to change that as it's commonplace with many network carriers. Air France, Lufthansa, Swiss, Brussels Airlines and SAS all offer *selected* great prices from a UK point of sale that are denied to their home audience.
The wider question may be is the demand Westbound out of MAN weak up front in the premium cabins and is that future better geared towards "Tommy Cook", Virgin Holidays and Norwegian? It's not as if the BA Shuttle is an alluring alternative, T3 is not a great option for frequent fliers IMHO.
Let's be honest, as things stand, American are setting up MAN-ORD to fail IMHO, they've given up by offering a B757 at all.

Can we please not use twitter as an analytical tool (!) Of course people fly on MAN airlines out of other airports, likely because the fare buckets at MAN were robust enough to price someone that price sensitive to backfill another route. Remember Air France LHR-LAX was full of CDG-LHR-LAX travellers flying for peanuts and MAN-ORD takes connections out of LHR leaving empty seats out of HEATHROW. Get too deep into this and we might as well read tea leaves (!)

Totally agree, though frequent flier programmes could be part of the matter, availability of seats on direct services may not have been available, e.g. Qatar in One World, seats may have been available only via intermediate points etc. timings or direct flights may not have suited.. could be staff travel routing in case that it wasn't available on direct flights....

EI-BUD

Skip,

Never underestimate the power of social media, you say 'don't use it as an analytical tool', but in a world where this area is growing rapidly, when it comes to analysis, advertising and customer service, there is a real danger of being 'left behind' if you don't tap into social media such as Twitter, there is a reason airlines/airports are spending so much time and money being part of it!

My post was more of an anecdotal look at posts/tweets, but to simply write off social media and say 'don't use it for X,y and z is quite naive in this day and age.

Indeed, as United Airlines found out yesterday!

Valid point on pricing re Lufthansa, there is a considerable difference. I have a schedule booked FRA-LHR-FRA in 3 weeks. Biz saver is €370. Biz saver FRA-MAN-FRA is €525. Obvious that LH are sitting on the hourly slots at LHR rather than adding more flights to MAN

I work in analytics :)
Social media is generally the realm of the intern or a junior. It has the behaviour of an echo chamber where like minded people can be misled to believe that they are in a different position than they actually are. Best examples are Alex Salmond convinced he'd won the referendum and more relevant, Corbynistas who thought JC was the messiah due to the number of positive tweets. Proper, rigorous sentiment analysis is rarely achieved on twitter as it's 1) Hard to do 2) Widely open to objection at senior management level and 3) has no measurable ROI whatsoever

Been in two many meetings on that one :(

Give it time skip, and soon a lot of analytics will be done via social media and smartphones, it's clearly the way things are going.

It's always naive to write things off while they are still in their infancy (and in the grand scheme of things, social media is in its infancy, we are just at the beginning of what we can eventually do with it), for example, people were quick to write off the rise of the low cost airlines in their infancy, but now seems to be the way all airlines are going.

We already have smartphone tracking for the purposes of traffic and congestion management, as well as analysing times through certain points (airports using blip track technology for example), and social media is already a huge outreach for pax into business, believe me, a time will come when alaytics will use social media as a measurable demographic. Like I say, to say it won't be at this stage would be very very naive indeed.

But back to MAN.........

San Fransisco starts tomorrow, lots of fanfare surrounding the launch, great to see it on the departure boards at long last.