True that Manchester management were anti LCC and that EZY went to LPL instead however I think that FR were instructed by the Irish Government to use LPL to protect Aer Lingus at that time. FR eventually went back but have fell out with MAN a few times and and have moved flights at the whim of MOL. Now MAN has bags of space with the opening of T2 extension and are hoping to tempt W6 from LPL as well. Could be interesting in the next few months.

Sounds like an interesting conversation.... :ok:

Rod Hill who was the CEO at LPL at the time was the man who got Easyjet to look at a north of England base. They started with Amsterdam and Nice.

Yes that was what happened at the time Aer Lingus were told to stop flying to Liverpool by the Irish Government in favour of Ryanair, and vice versa at Manchester.

...& yes way back in the day a similar arrangement existed at STN too on the direction of the Irish Government re EIN & RYR.

Hey MAG! Opportunity knocks ... if you're quick, agile and up for a challenge!!!

Dig out that plan you shelved around five years ago. Blow off the dust. The one which would have resulted in the T3 pier being extended to the east, allowing for afew more gates to accommodate based Ryanair B738's. Back then, you discovered that a number of utility and fibre cable trunk routes were routed under Old Ringway Road, and these would have to be rerouted at your expense to allow the build to proceed. So you dropped the extension plan on cost grounds - and, lo and behold - you subsequently had to turn away Ryanair's request to base an additional five B738's at MAN because T3 was bulked out. Quelle surprise! And that was certainly detrimental to the economy of this region. Was it three extra EasyJet's you couldn't fit in T1 as well? Tragic.

Well, now Santa is coming to town and he is bearing gifts. £4Bn available for projects in the North which offer "clear benefit to the region" and which can be delivered during the lifetime of this government (three years?).

You can borrow this letter template which I've prepared for you if you like. Save time!

Dear Rishi (me old cock-sparrow),

We know you've chucked us under the bus so far during this covid pandemic-thingie. But maybe you could glance in our direction now? Time you showed us some love, pal!!! [**Remember to sound very Northern so those Westminster civil servant types take note of your inherent regionalness and oikish charm**].

We've got this ace cool plan to extend out our T3 Pier to the east so we can accommodate additional European air services for the economic benefit of our region (brill for post-Brexit trading links 'n' all). Unfortunately, there is a bunch of utility cables under the site we need which meant we couldn't make the numbers work for our shareholders, even though that expansion would have greatly benefitted the region's economy. We subsequently had to refuse an additional five based Ryanair B738's due to lack of space in T3. And EasyJet Airbi in T1 'cos we'd not expanded there either. So hows about we sit down tomorrow and talk about paying for our T3 pier extension with dough from your £4Bn 'levelling-up' war-chest? We can deliver within three years - honest! - and we'll certainly be needing the extra stands by then with C-19 well in the rear-view mirror. And here's the best bit: Ryanair don't even want fancy gates with business lounges and artworks. They want low cost functional ones which do the job effectively. So they're actually quite cheap to build if we could just shift those darned utility cables out of the way? Howzabout it, Guv? Maybe chuck in an extra twenty quid for some harp stickers (the new ones with enhanced kn*ckers) and a bit of blue and gold paint?

Oh, and if you could spare afew bob to help us complete T2 Pier 2 which we've had to freeze that would be really great as well. The planes will all be back in three years and we can't afford to build anything for them right now. No dosh coming in and all that.

Cheers, Pal!

Lots of Luv and Sloppy Kisses,

Cheerful Charlie, ('New Broom') Can-Do Kaz and all your mates the MAG Massif.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You know it makes sense. How could Rishi refuse?

And let's be honest here. We all know that there were long term hopes to replace T1 & 3 with a new T2-style replacement eventually. But that idea is an absolute dead duck now following what Covid has wrought. So what we really need to do (in a hurry) is knock T1 and T3 together into a single terminal. Then knock down T1 car park and extend the existing complex to the North with a new mega-security area for fast and efficient processing of passengers. Lots of baggage drops, QR-code readers and a big arrivals area with zillions of egates. Then we buy a bunch of orange, blue / gold, pink / purple paint and ... wizzo ... we got ourselves an awesome quick-turnaround cheap and cheerful no-frills mega terminal for three well known carriers to bulk out? What's not to love?

Then we concentrate all the long-haul, business travel and upmarket leisure stuff in our new T2 interchange with a super-efficient transfers lounge and great facilities. Compact parking area measured up for Dashes and ATR's. Domestic arrivals channel. Dedicated areas for Oneworld, Star Alliance and SkyTeam. Jet2 Zone. TUI Zone. Virgin Zone (airline variety). Every other misfit zone. Private lounges. Top-end retail. The works! A fantastic amenity for the North. Demonstrable benefit to the economy. Deliverable within the lifetime of this government. If you cast aside MAN's favourite word ... "NO!!!"

Text Rishi now. Ask for some dosh. Blow the dust off the T3 pier extension plan. Buy some shovels. Get to work. You've got three years to get it done. Tick tock ...

Oh ... and if you do a Zoom meeting with Whitehall, be sure to bury that Manchester cargo marketing guy under the floorboards. He will blow the whole game again. Suggest they spend the dosh at Stansted. You've seen his track record. Is he dead already?

P.S. Dear Rishi. Please will you buy us a new Hi-Lo. From that fund. Huge benefit for the North. We promise not to ship it out to Stansted later. Honest! Fingers crossed and hope to die! Love, Chaz and Kaz. :-)

Manchester cargo guy?? Well he doesn't appear to know where the 'reply' button on emails is - assuming that he receives them.

Sorry.....

If major utilities need to be moved then there is no chance of delivery in 5 years, let alone 3.

OK, I confess. That bit was a joke. There isn't one. There's just a guy based at EMA who takes MAN's calls and switch-sells them to EMA / STN! :-)

Give me some shovels. I'll get it sorted for 'em.

I think the original plans suggested three so mr Mr Ozzy is infact correct.

Always liked Paranoid btw........

MAG may have thought 3 years, but had they discussed it with the utility companies, whose workplans have to be agreed with their regulators...?

Yep. But they can blame Gubmint bureaucracy for that inevitable delay. And so keep the dosh. Or risk hacking off the voters at a crucial moment!

Even allowing for what has happened to the industry this year - I can't see MAG spending the money to extend T1, when the plan was for it to be mothballed pretty soon after the entirety of the T2 works were complete. The costs of demolishing that car park and rebuilding a new passenger handling structure in its place would be significant, and I can't see that it make financial sense when they've already accepted that T1 needs to go, and that it's likely that terminal capacity is going to be much less of an issue for the foreseeable.

On the topic of new stands for Ryanair and easyJet based growth, is it not simpler to concrete some off terminal apron and bus? It's far from ideal but it's also pretty common to do so. I mean if you really want more loco, that would seem a decent halfway house. Or is the cost of the bussing being passed onto the airlines who won't pay for an airbridge a deal breaker?

It's a fair question Skip, and I'm sure someone can give you a more informed answer than me. However, with the boundary limits, I'm just not sure how much ground is left to concrete over for additional apron parking. I've a feeling there may still be space to the NW of Pier 1 of T2 and beyond the existing remote stands newly completed. With the inevitable staggering of the first wave departure slots, I think before covid, a/c for the later departures of that wave were often brought onto stand after the early flights had gone, rather than busing. But that requires a slick towing operation.

Can't really comment on relative costs and who stands them.

This would be a service diversion, paid for by MAG so not requiring any agreement from the regulator. It would take a while to plan in just because of the nature of the cables to be moved.

Your concerns are valid. But if we acknowledge that T1 in particular has had very little spent on it in recent times in expectation that it would be demolished in the not too distant future, then doing nothing cannot remain a viable option for much longer. The envelope has been pushed pretty much to the limit. So if a new-build terminal is off the menu (almost a certainty given the implied costs of that) then a significant refresh / refurb of T1/T3 actually IS itself the cheap option. If that complex has to serve for another 20 years (for example) - a highly likely scenario - and since it has already been neglected for a decade now, some money will have to be spent on it. It can't soldier on for much longer without some well overdue TLC. I'd heard (and stand to be corrected on this) that the original T1 car park will need to come down anyway (structure life-expired?). So that space could be used to extend capability for processing formalities re arriving and departing pax. This also brings significant operational cost savings, as ideally T3 would cease to be serviced as a check-in / arrivals point in its own right. Just one set of facilities needed to service the whole complex as one integrated larger terminal. The extension need not be an expensive showpiece structure. 'Functional' and 'low budget' would tick all the boxes. Ryanair encourages thrift in such developments too. No-frills carriers love that whole 'bus station' vibe.

On the matter of how quickly terminal capacity will be needed, I'd suggest that the return of business will be very uneven across different market sectors. Short-haul no-frills carriers will go for a 'landgrab' strategy, securing valuable peak-time slots where they can and grandfathering them to stake their future. This puts pressure on less flexible legacy competitors as well. They can do this with some confidence too, as previous recessions have shown that people DO still take vacations after a downturn - but they often choose to trade down to a lower budget option for a couple of years. Hence cheapie flights to Spain and Turkey come back much stronger than upmarket offerings to Florida and the Caribbean. Business travel trades down too to a far greater extent than people realise. MAN needs to plan around the likelihood that an increased proportion of its customers will be using no-frills metal in the years to come. And that means that T1/T3 - the likely home of no-frills at MAN - must be tailored to cope with that market shift. Higher footfall, shorter dwell-times airside. It doesn't need to be an architectural showpiece. Cheap and reliable is the requirement. Boxy and functional is fine.

Unfortunately, as MANFOD alludes to, the only land which could reasonably be converted for additional aircraft parking is located on the west side of the airport - much too distant to be a viable option for quick service no-frills turnarounds serviced from T1/T3. And the only land available close to the existing T3 footprint is that same area which has all those utilities routed beneath it. The problem there was never the cost of extending the pier structure itself - it was the cost of rerouting those utilities. And that challenge applies equally whether one were to build a structure or just remote hard stands over that space. So the real choice is stark: pay to reroute the utilities and expand capacity, or accept the existing limitations for the long term. I can't visualise any suitable spare land of sufficient size for aircraft parking adjacent to the T1 footprint.