BA With drawl from Manchester.

[Mr Mac]

I have been a long serving BA, and before them BEA / BOAC customer flying from Manchester on both business and holiday flights. Would anybody care to comment on why our national flag carrier appears to have abandoned us apart from the New York and Heathrow / Gatwick services. My company has now ceased using BA on the back of this due to the problems we have had using London terminals. We now use Emirates / Singapore / Lufthansa for Africa and Far East and BMI to Chicago / US. It appears a very short range view to have done this on the Eurpopean routes, and the growth of Emirates services into Glasgow/ Newcastle/ Manchester/ Birmingham would appear to demonstrate that the market for long range passengers going east and south vis DXB rather than SE England is growing. Perhaps BA should change its name to London Airways or some such name !. Will be intrested to hear your comments.

[Hotel Mode]

I used to fly some of BA's european routes from Manchester and frankly the loads stank, it was either 30 on a 110 seater of highish yield business pax or 110 extremely low yield bucket and spade traffic. Carriers like EK are doing exactly the same thing BA do, picking up pax and flying them to their hub for connections elsewhere, in EK's case they are ideally placed for connections elsewhere in Asia and Australasia as they are roughly halfway. BA's hub location 200 miles away makes this slower and less economic.

As far as i can see all the long haul carriers that operate there are connecting into their hubs and not relying on point to point traffic EK, QR, SQ, AA etc, the JFK route is about the only one that can survive on point to point alone.

BA has been short of cash for last 7 years and unable to buy new aircraft. Those it has can be far more profitably operated from LHR. when the new fleets start arriving MAN may see some new routes.

[RingwaySam]

Could they not base a 744 at MAN? Im sure the demand to places like Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong would be quite high.

[Hotel Mode]

1 744 would be insanely expensive to base at MAN, crew would have to be positioned from London, or a new base set up. The point i was making earlier is if there really was demand for those routes (at sustainable fares) then they would be better operated by a carrier based in HKG, PEK or PVG. BA serves several places in the world that have no home based carrier flying direct long haul services, purely because there is insufficient point to point demand but you can fill a 744 from say PHX or BLR with transfers onto other BA flights. Ie its not PHX-LHR that makes the cash its PHX - CDG/AMS/DXB/DEL etc etc. A MAN - PEK would be just that, where would you find 337 pax a day for that?

[spanishflea]

Yawn! There are literally hundreds of threads on here about this subject. Let's not rehash it yet again...

[10secondsurvey]

Mr. mac, i agree. BA seem to have missed a trick regarding regional flights. I know people who only used BA from regional airports so they could interline to international flights. Without the regional flights they look at alternatives.

Clearly BA don't think that kind of business is important anymore. They are only interested in London pax.

[dollydaydream]

And I think Hotel Mode is several years out of date!!!

[Hotel Mode]

BA seem to have missed a trick regarding regional flights.
The only regional - hub route BA has got rid of is Belfast, the other regional routes fed into non hub airports or worse other airlines hubs.

Why am I several years out of date? Please name me a successful Long Haul destination served from MAN that is not either low yield bucket and spade, Visiting Freinds and relatives, or which does not deliver passengers into the hub of a hub and spoke airline.

NYC is mentioned above.

[PAXboy]

One possible explanation:

BA could see that they were losing money on these routes and that the new boys on the block (EK etc.) and the LCCs were ripping them to pieces from either side. The cost of rebuilding the routes would have been very high - I am sure they did not walk away from routes overnight.

These routes, like many other areas of business, have a natural life span and, being successful, will ensure that rivals bite into them. Look at the motor car world and see how manufacturers rise and peak and plateau and then fall as the competition gets stuck into them. No company or product remains high for ever. Those that say 'we gave up on BA' might - next year - have said we stopped using BA because <take your pick> offered us better deals. I would bet good money that has already been the case.

BA appear to have seen the writing on the wall and, rather than go to the wall, are making strategic reductions to keep themselves afloat. Better to survive being smaller than to try and maintain world dominance and go bust. I think that BA have done extremely well, selling off and giving away bits and pieces and reshaping themselves into BOAC. It is a natural 'arc' for a company and I think that they are close to achieving something very brave that no other carrier has tried.


[sound of Jet-A1 being thrown on the flames]

[13Alpha]

As a non-London resident I'd be very happy if BA serviced more international destinations from regional airports. But it ain't going to happen any time soon. Whether we like it or not they've chosen Heathrow to be their base and they're likely to become even more Heathrow-centric when T5 opens.

From a commercial point of view it makes absolute sense - the London area is where most of the high-yielding passengers BA want to attract live and/or work. For sure they want folks from GLA/EDI/MAN/ABZ to fly with them too, hence the feeder flights. But it's more profitable to them to fly us all via London than set up (or expand) regional bases.

From a non-London customer viewpoint, travelling via Heathrow sucks, and for many destinations there are now better alternatives for us from regional airports. But BA is very clearly focused on making profit for its shareholders, and they've made their judgement on how best to achieve that. I don't think any notion that because they're the flag carrier and have "British" in their name they have to take regional sensibilities into account really enters the equation.

As PAXboy says, it's pretty admirable they've survived at all given the number of other large airlines which have fallen by the wayside in recent years (or would have done if they weren't given protection from bankruptcy :rolleyes: )

13Alpha

[lexxity]

Why am I several years out of date? Please name me a successful Long Haul destination served from MAN that is not either low yield bucket and spade, Visiting Freinds and relatives, or which does not deliver passengers into the hub of a hub and spoke airline.

Lahore? Remember when BA used to have a 747 service to Islamabad from MAN?

[22/04]

Some of us seem to think of BA as a British carrier. It is these days a global carrier whose major hub is London.

As others have said, all carriers see MAN, BHX etc as a spoke destination. The only exceptions are those who see it as a bucket and spade origin e.g VS services to Orlando. VS are a genuinely confused carrier (I am a cusotmer and FF with them) -they too will have to decide if they are an international carrier or a UK long range holiday operator- today they are two "mini airlines" - a bit of both. Even there fleet shows this -look at the IFE.

Sorry, MAN and BHX are spoke not hub. It's why I live in the South East

[PAXboy]

It is my view that the industry is currently in 'disassembly mode', which is to say that we are seeing the monolithic carriers of old: BA, PA, LH and others, being replaced by LCCs for the domestic market and specialist carriers for Long Haul (sub divided into the Y for holidays and C for corporate). Add in the expansion of NetJets and the like...?? In another decade or so, the industry might be in 'assembly mode'.

The old style carriers can only survive by getting even bigger (KL/AF) and by extending their affiliates (LH). Those major carriers will continue to merge and since SN and the old Swiss have gone, we will see activity on the other medium size carriers such as IB and AZ.

This market fragmentation is a natural phase for all mature industries. That is, because the carriers got as big as they could within their own country. Since current regulations either prevent or discourage cross continent mergers, there are few options. You can get even bigger and risk an even bigger bust or you can do what BA is doing. To my amateur eye (not a professional airline watcher) they appear to be the only carrier deliberately shrinking, in order to find a lower position that is stable and viable. Hence they are divesting of routes, equipment, people and bases. I do not expect LGW to continue at it's current rate of usage for BA.

This approach (if that is what it is!) could see them be strong enough that, when some of the others have a merger too far ... they could pick up some of the routes - emphatically not pick up the old carriers themselves.

As I say, I am an amateur but if I was the kind of person who bought shares, I would have have bought BA some time ago and be betting on them into the future because they are doing the counter intuitive thing.

Yes, it can be sad to see old routes and bases go but nothing stays the same and if they did not withdraw from the routes - they would have the routes wrested out of their hands, evidence of which abounds. All industries go through the cycle:- Expansion, Merger, Takeover, Expansion, Bust, Collapse, Fragmentation, Contraction and ... Expansion again. To complicate matters, some parts of an industry might be expanding (LCC) at the same time as others (F class) is contracting/changing.

You simply have to make a good calculation of where you are on the expansion/contraction cycle and then position yourself for 5 or 10 years on.

[RevMan2]

Why did I think that this thread was about BA hiring Texan pilots for a MAN-based operation...?

[SLF3]

I think the simple answer is Heathrow - who in their right mind is going to transfer T1 to T4 in Heathrow if there is any other route open to them?

[Mr Mac]

Well some interesting comments, thank you for the input. I do believe that the comments concerning BA use of Gatwick / Heathrow hubs do make commercial sense to BA, but the people who do not live in the SE, and or, do not like using these terminals are deffinetly short changed as a result. As for the load factors on the European routes from Manchester mentioned, I always found them to be quite full. Indeed the only lightly loaded flight I have travelled on with BA from Manchester was to Gatwick (12 of us including crew !). The point I was trying to make is that there is a significant section of the population who live outside the SE and who travel on business and or pleasure, with scheduled airlines and will I am sure be looking at alternatives to BA as a result of their with drawl from Regional airports. This is compounded by the fact that changing at Heathrow is probably the worst place in the world for bags to be lost, or delayed (my last 4 trips through their resulted in 2nr no shows for luggage outbound, 1nr inbound - delays of 48hrs and 24hrs respectivly, and 1nr no show / never seen again !) Anyway will no longer be going there in future, apart from getting rid of last BA air miles, but will miss Molten Brown Spa if nothing else.

[fyrefli]

Why did I think that this thread was about BA hiring Texan pilots for a MAN-based operation...?

Precisely what I thought! :D

I think the simple answer is Heathrow - who in their right mind is going to transfer T1 to T4 in Heathrow if there is any other route open to them?

Quite.

the people who do not live in the SE, and or, do not like using these terminals are deffinetly short changed as a result

Why should BA care about that?

You simply have to make a good calculation of where you are on the expansion/contraction cycle and then position yourself for 5 or 10 years on.

Good analysis.

[PAXboy]

Yes - many people will be very cross that BA has left the regions but, as we all know, transit at LHR is grim and was losing BA business. Since they can do very little about LHR (I'm sure they have tried) their only choice is to reduce the times that people hub through it unless they are staying with BA and within T5 as they can then have a much strong grip on it all.

Yes, I have read all the comments about BA not having a grip on T4 so how can they possibly do so at T5 and I am waiting to see what they do actually do! I am 'lucky' in that, for 75% of my adult life, I have lived within a maximum of 36 miles of LHR and have only hubbed through it once and took the precaution of collecting my bag and taking it over the next terminal myself.

But this is not a time to expand an airline (and has not been for some time) so I continue to think that BA have been fantastically clever in making a strategic reduction in services.

Time will tell.

[spanishflea]

I think the simple answer is Heathrow - who in their right mind is going to transfer T1 to T4 in Heathrow if there is any other route open to them?

Thousands of people do every day with alternative routes being widely available.

This is down to many reasons. Ignorance, price, frequent flyer loyalty, and airline product loyalty being 4 just off the top of my head.

Not to mention the connection procedure is only a hassle at two bottleneck periods of the day. The majority of people transit relatively painlessly.

[AUTOGLIDE]

It's irrelevant for passengers. MAN is served by so many airlines that it doesn't need BA. The European flag carriers can connect you to their rather nice hubs, EK/SQ/ER can get you anywhere south or east, and USA/AAL/DL etc get you west. You can avoid LHR, and (in my personal experience) fly on airlines that give more consistent service and are less likely to lose your bags than BA.
Agree with the name change though, an LHR operation is not what comes to mind with the name 'British'.