Quote : It's alright saying 'we have non-stop flights to Los Angeles' but if they only go for a few weeks in the summer, they're not much better than holiday charter flights


LAX is served for the full six months from May to end of October at 3 x per week this year and next year at 5x per week with MT and Virgin both on the route. About 10% of the MT MAN-LAX passengers are transferring over MAN from Europe and the UK with a number of code-shares. VS will be similar. At LAX with an MT ticket you can connect on to Jet Blue. So, yes it is seasonal for now, as is the trend for North America generally, but it is providing a regular scheduled service with a premium cabin and network connectivity. No frequent flyer etc but a whole lot more than a charter. Worth remembering that until 2016 we had no service at all to the US West Coast.

Didn't really mean to pick on any particular route but just pointing out that whilst there is good choice of routes and service in the summer there is very little to be had in the winter. Sadly that doesn't cut it for business. I suspect the lack of choice in November placed me in the position of ending up flying stateside in economy when I (or rather the client) was prepared to pay for Business....but it wasn't available. Not good for business if you'll pardon the pun.

Also both TCX and VS tend to reserve a lot of their capacity in the premium cabins for their 'holiday' customers thus restricting the available space for pure airline customers.

There still isn't for most of the year

What have we done to upset Spicejet ?

There we were bumbling along nicely having had Spicejet appear 3 times delivering their new B737MAX's through Man, now all of a sudden, they are using Prestwick,
with the last two transiting through there.

Have we turned them away " due lack of space", or have they gone to somewhere with less hassle ?

If it's the former, then it's a poor show yet again and will only get worse as the increase in airlines operating appears to be outpacing Stands available.

One example as I understand it, is that Ryanair are finding it difficult to introduce more aircraft because of lack of Stands on T3 (Some may say good). I just say pretty poor planning by those in charge.

Yet another example of infrastructure in this part of the UK not keeping pace with development. All well and good increasing terminal capacity but not if you can't park your aeroplanes !

I don't know about SpiceJet but Ryanair, or so I believe, is not just stand availability but also capacity within T3 and that problem is nor going to go away overnight (unless we suddenly lose flybe - which would be a disaster).

Bear in mind the huge capacity reductions going West for VS over the winter season - only 14 seats to either ATL or JFK daily over the winter season.
Looking to get to Nashville in in January was over £5K from Manchester - go to London and the same dates were £2.2K - so hopefully the temporary lack of capacity won't kill off the demand.

Why the use of personal language 'we'? Why the personal investment as though it's a personal affront?

I'm very sure they went where the fuel is cheap and you can park right by the door.

Yep - I don't understand the Virgin policy. The 747 is the wrong plane in the winter. Waaay too much rear end capacity and not enough front end. The 14 UC seats in the Jumbo is around half (?) what you get in the A330 and for that matter the Delta 767s that used to run those routes. In my regular experience of both types, they didn't have any difficulty more or less filling them. They are suppressing their own demand...a strange business model.
I'm looking for alternative options for the next stateside trip (actually working on the SQ/UA option even though it would be self connect)

Since Delta stopped - I use KLM for any westbound winter trips.

Unfortunately I have a logic breakdown going in the opposite direction first. Besides it seems every time I get offered the KLM connection it involves getting that ridiculous 5.55am departure. No thanks.

BA schedule for summer 19 reduced down to 6 daily Mon-Fri. BA1395 and BA1403 departures dropped. Surprising regarding the BA1403 as that's usually very premium heavy.

From memory BA reached a peak of about 12 weakday departures on man-lhr flights

Since I've not seen an OAN having been issued for this change, although OAN 126/2018 is currently missing, I thought I would include details from the relevant NOTAM

Q) EGTT/QMXCL/IV/M/A/000/999/5321N00217W005
B) FROM: 18/12/10 16:00C) TO: 19/03/10 06:00E) TWY NA HAS RELOCATED 82M NORTH OF OLD LOCATION. TWY IS UNLIT. FOLLOW
ME PROVIDED HN AND DURING LOW VIS OPS

My understanding of this amendment is that the airport is temporarily using the new Pier One taxiway Kilo but under the old taxiway name.

Any thoughts from anyone - maybe Roverman?

Hi Scottie.

OAN 118. I agree with your assessment based on what has been said because I don't think Kilo will be complete before the new November Alpha comes into use.

N-A is the temporary designator for Kilo until that is released from its present duties at Re-designation Phase 2 in early 2020. The N-A designator is then redundant. It has escaped media attention but the taxiway brought into use yesterday is the first genuinely new piece of airfield concrete (at least part of it is) of the MAN-TP development.

American Airlines plans Boeing 787 Philadelphia service in W19

Credit @Airlineroute

If I remember correctly the peak 'Shuttle' was 12 per day plus back ups on the early morning and some evening flights

The frequency was always going to decrease as Manchester gets more and more long haul operators (Ethiopian & Jet for example), I can see the shuttle going completely at some point as MAN continues to attract new airlines and HS2 come online, also BA can use the valuable LHR slots to start additional routes ex LHR

If it wasn't for the RR engine issues on the 787's, I suspect we wouldn't be seeing 747's operating MAN-JFK/ATL.

For what it's worth, I was on VS127 on 23rd November and VS128 on the 28th, both flights had just under 400 passengers plus crew. It was noticeable whilst waiting for bags at MAN how many cases were for passengers who had connected at JFK off DL flights.

Well that's thirty years off so no worries.