Manchester hub 2017
 

I am led to believe that there will be a fourth hub 'wave' at MAN for Summer 17, late morning/midday roughly between 1130-1230. Not sure that this connects with much long-haul as most of the North Atlantic and Far East has gone by then or is too tight for a connection. The exceptions are Emirates afternoon A380, Virgin second Orlando, and MT Boston. Possibly AA Chicago if that departs around 1300 as it did this summer, no Terminal transfer required with that one. Anyone know any more?

There does appear to be signs of a 4th wave, however the timetable still seems to have a lot of work in progress.

Heard today about rumours that LHR is in the frame.

Really? Do tell, that one has been swirling around for a while.

Now being reported by The Scotsman.

Apparently it's on ACL website for Mar '17 but I haven't checked it.

will be Edinburgh and Aberdeen from March 17 apparently

Surely you have to use the 190's at Heathrow, and they are going to need possibly 3 aircraft - so maybe some of these regional bases are going to get 170's - DSA/CWL?

Any code share with VS?

BEE have really ramped-up their codeshare agreements with long-haulers of late, but these are all currently centred on flights operated by those guys out of the regions (apart from BAW on the LGW-NQY service).

Guess they are looking at feeding the likes of UAE, ETD, SIN, CPA (and not forgetting VIR) out of LHR also?

Cathay already codeshares with BA between LHR and the UK regions. Otherwise I agree it would be Star Alliance and non-aligned airlines like Virgin, ETD who would be the targets as you mention. KL/AF already has the Skyteam camp covered via AMS/CDG.

If it happens standby for the standard Big Airways reaction (more 767s/A321s anyone ?)

763s won't be around all that much longer and BA don't seem to have enough A321s.

My bet would be to dump one or two of the ZZA 772s onto domestic markets to swamp the market.


cs

Thinking about this. It would make sense if some announcement was about to happen due to the blatantly incomplete summer schedules.


cs

As has been mentioned before on this thread, you cannot make money on UK domestics feeding third party carriers - they just will not pay an adequate prorate which is why the only sustained feed operations are when the domestic and the long haul operator are the same and can thus look at the overall picture. This is not a particular UK problem - look at who feeds KLM from the UK - shock horror its KLM (or wholly owned Cityhopper). If Flybe are seriously looking at this, I'd assume (with no evidence whatsoever) it was a play to try to operate these routes for long enough for the slots to become theirs and then to sell them for more money than they lost operating the routes. However, I'd also postulate, again with no evidence whatsoever, that's they would run out of money before they got to that point.

I am sure VS said when they pulled out of the Little Red experiment that the EDI route at least wasnt working for them as it was mostly point to point (O and D) trips between Edinburgh and London and therefore minimal traffic was connecting onto their longhaul services.

This would appear to suit Flybe if they are serious about establishing a Heathrow service from Scotland.

Be interesting to see what aircraft they intend use, I'm guessing the E195's unless they are looking to wet lease something bigger.

From what I've heard it's the dash 8

BA's airbuses won't stand a chance!

Any other major trunk routes where TP's successfully compete against jets?

Flybe and easyJet compete on a lot of UK-Belfast routes (albeit to different airports). Same goes for Dublin-UK with Aer Lingus/Ryanair.

Flybe work at Belfast City because Easyjet and other airlines are stuck far from the city centre at Aldergrove due to a short runway
Regarding Dublin, there seems to be very little where Flybe competes with a Q400 against a jet.

That said, what do Flybe use at London City ?

By "major trunk" I was thinking of feeding a hub (DUB's not there yet!)