I understand G-HUET is meant to be heading for Loganair once she finishes with Aurigny in March/ April 2020

Loganair suspends Derry to Manchester flights.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northe...-west-50471852

You could book Ryanair to Liverpool instead.

LM are dropping there GLA-SEN service from 3rd January.

Old news. They dropped their route last week and BE announced resumption of SEN-GLA.

They are dropping GLA-SEN because Flybe/Virgin Connect are starting the same route thrice daily from Ist May 20.

I don't think replacing the D328 with an Embraer did anything to help the route as I find the Embraer rather cramped and not suited to my 6ft 2in frame, whereas the D328 felt much better. The block times for both types must be very similar so their hopes of increasing pax numbers by putting 'a jet' on the route seems optimistic; in reality pax numbers for the past four months are almost identical to those of the same period last year.

Back in January 2005 the route carried 1,361 passengers. This increased to a maximum of 4,880 in July 2006 but has since dropped back to 1,746 in October this year.

Lat year a total of 19,940 pax flew the NWI-MAN route, while in 2017 it was 26,209. Going back to 2008 that figure was 42,846 so there has been a huge drop off in traffic on the route. Who has operated NWI-MAN over the years? I can recall it being a Flybe route (I think) that was then franchised to Loganair and latterly operated by them in their own right. I wonder how the fares have changed over the years because they seem quite high these days and I wonder if, perhaps in the Flybe days, fares were lower in real terms. Otherwise it's hard to see why the pax numbers fell off so dramatically as the train journey still takes nearly 5 hours and by road it takes about the same amount of time.

Wasn't the route originally operates by Suckling Airways who then acquired by Loganair and operated as part of the Flybe franchise

This is surely a continuation of the trend that we've seen in recent years with shorter, overland domestic routes disappearing one by one by one - some along with the airlines that flew them. Loads of routes have gone - to name but a few:

Edinburgh to Inverness
Leeds to Bristol, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Exeter
Newcastle to Stansted, Gatwick, Birmingham
Manchester to Glasgow, Newcastle, Stansted, Gatwick and now Norwich
Norwich to Exeter
Plymouth and Blackpool in their entirety

Double APD on domestic return flights, increased hassle and queuing times at airport security and, in some cases, improving rail services all make for a pretty unhappy picture for UK mainland routes. Norwich-Manchester just gets added to that very long list, of which I am sure I will only have covered a fraction above. The surprise is that it's lasted far longer than many of the others, not that it has now gone, I'd say.

Suckling was originally Ipswich and then changed to Cambridge.

via RAF Wattisham in between.

First NWI-MAN schedule was flown by Air Anglia, for about a year during 1971-72. Twice weekly by Islander, which then also went on to LPL. Single fare was initially £11...
Route then relaunched twice-daily (Mo to Fr) in early 1994 by Interline, who used J31, later Short 330. After their demise in spring 1996, Suckling came onto the route with Do228, but gave up the route soon after becoming Scot Airways in late 1999. Eastern replaced them from Feb 2000, with J31, until May 2006, and bmi regional also flew the route briefly for a couple of months in early 2004 (ERJ).
Flybe started service with larger Dash 8 in May 2006, and flew the route until March 2012, when Loganair took over responsibility using the Do328 (initially flown for them by Suckling, prior to integration). Loganair of course operated under the Flybe franchise until Sep 2017, and the ERJ then replaced the Dornier in March 2019. Peak annual passenger numbers were about 47k in 2007, the first full year of Flybe service.

northsands

Thanks for the very comprehensive history of the NWI-MAN route. Obviously it was the introduction of the Dash 8 in 2006 that caused the jump in passenger numbers - probably linked to much more attractive fares than previously was possible. Maybe the market is still there but not at the fares that the ERJ operation needs to charge. Norwich, with its 5 hour road or rail journey times to Manchester, would possibly still seem to merit an air service.

The numbers and yield are probably there but its matching that up with the right carrier and air frame to use is the issue and I guess not just for LM and NWI but the wider domestic airline business model