From what I hear the owned A330 are very nice inside and have a very product, second hand A330 will become easier to get now airlines are upgrading to A350s
however upgrading to brand new aircraft is a very expensive exercise and probably out of TCX pocket money at present.

Indeed. I was a regular on the UA100/101 MAN-IAD and it was great whilst it lasted. Business always seemed pretty full when I used it but then again - only 16 seats in the 757. Poking my head round the curtain to look at the back end, there were always empty seats. But I guess the main thing was when you deplane at IAD, the transit traffic goes one way and the P2P traffic goes another way. The transit traffic was always in the majority meaning that the actual MAN-IAD traffic wasn't great. Worse still the transit traffic can go via anywhere with anyone and usually goes with the cheapest price; and these days with so many non-stop alternatives there is probably less transit traffic too.

These days my MAN to Washington trips are either through EWR and take a leisurely train down to Union Station if I have the luxury of time...it's quite a nice trip and you end up in the centre of DC....Last time I flew to JFK with TCX - put MAN-IAD in to their booking system and they sold me a great connection to Dulles with Jet Blue (a great airline) at a compelling price. The connection was a doddle and the connecting flight 45-50 mins. Only problem I have doing that with TCX is for long haul I won't do economy and some of their flights are all economy.
I can't see a direct MAN-IAD again in the forseeable future sadly.

Connected through T3 on Friday and it is really not a very pleasant experience. However, with Flybe more or less enjoying a monopoly as far as intl -> domestic connections are concerned, the choice is between worse and even worse, i.e. MAN or BHX. If you travel from the continent, the only alternative often is KLM via AMS to reach UK regional airports - which often tends to be quite expensive and has its own challenges at AMS.

To be honest, flying in Europe has become a rather unenjoyable experience. I used to do 100+ flights annually until a couple of years ago but have cut back flying dramatically. I use the train much more often these days and if travel is non-essential, I stay put and do video/telephone conferencing etc.

Anybody have any insight on what the airport's current plans are on Chinese routes, and whether HU plan on starting CAN in Dec. 18?

Some excellent figures in June for Middle East with all except Saudi increasing by at least 8% and EK by 16%.

Cargo Clown,

Let's hope that that a 4th terminal, south of 05R/23L in never approved.... Not now, not ever, never......(Apologies to the late, great, Andy Williams).

The folks who live in Heald Green, Wilmslow, Moss Nook, and Styal have suffered enough.

Recent posts on both here and on several FB groups/MEN/BBC have shown that current MAG/EGCC management suits can't run the 3 terminals they already have properly, so don't even think about a 4th.

As we know a terminal on south side will never happen due to it being in Cheshire

True never even thought about that, the infrastructure would need a huge change as it just couldn`t cope and would make Wilmslow unbearable.

Have a week off in London. Get a free London Standard and read about Heathrow's woes passport control for more than two and a half hours.

Get back to listen to colleague's complaints about Dubai's business class lounge queue for toilets.....

and then back on here. Is there an airport utopia and where is it? Probably an airport without passengers and labelled a 'white elephant'.

So the fact that other airports have problems means there should be no pressure on Manchester to improve? It's a false perspective.

Yes, Heathrow should sort out passport control (don't need a week to read the Evening Standard, though) and Dubai should serve less fibre in the dinner. But Manchester urgently needs to sort out its security nightmare, its haphazard implementation of parking charges. They are not mutually exclusive...

And there are plenty of airports with plenty of people that are far better (not just the classic Asian airports included in the list).

MAN777, it is indeed, and along with Styal Woods, a very pleasant are for walking, horse riding, etc, as is most of the green space south of the airport. MAG have been allowed to tarmac too much of it already.

The CAA statistics for June are now out - minus Inverness and Jersey -so here is my monthly analysis. Please note that as I have added 3 American airports to Part 4 I'm afraid I have had to take 2 screenshots!

Anyway I hope you find it of interest.

https://image.ibb.co/fBYKjT/Screenshot_1.png
https://image.ibb.co/fyfzjT/Screenshot_2.png
https://image.ibb.co/jyU3B8/Screenshot_3.png
https://image.ibb.co/gu4EJo/Screenshot_4.png
https://image.ibb.co/keOkPT/Screenshot_7.png
https://image.ibb.co/maw5PT/Screenshot_5.png
https://image.ibb.co/iZnZJo/Screenshot_6.png

Thanks for posting the stats Scottie.

The change to A350 and increase in frequency to daily certainly seems to have paid off for Cathay Pacific, with an average of 264 passengers per flight on 280 available seats for a 94.2% load factor !
No wonder they are upgrading to A350-1000 soon.

Presumably the upgrade to the -1000 will maximize the load factor and profitability of the route. As you say, a 94.2% load factor is quite impressive considering how the route itself was called off the first time round, especially since Cathay were using the B747-300/400 back in the day. The capacity of a single -1000 is 366 compared to the 900's 280.

Am I missing something, or is SIN on a continual downward slide..?

The statistics posted by Scottie Dog are, as always, interesting. As opposed to pax departing to all these destinations, are there a complimentary set for arriving pax?

How many travellers, for each destination, start and finish their trips at EGCC, as opposed to those pax starting and finishing, 'at the other end', and going home again?

No real axe to grind, but as a 'human geographer', just curious as to where everyone's going?

I would imagine the reduction in passengers on a few Spain routes would be because of Monarch? I know they used to operate AGP, ALC, PMI & TFS twice a day and EasyJet have continued to operate most of them just once a day this year, and they're not on the A321 for that matter.