MAN Doing poor

Wasn’t this forum once a place for worthwhile discussion?

Flex

Thank you for that reasoned and informative contribution to the discussion, Irfan. :rolleyes:

Whats wrong with BLK?

It’s a hole.

For the umpteenth time…. THIS IS NOT A CHATROOM!!!

If you’ve nothing worthwhile to add to a thread, then don’t add anything to it.

How hard is that?

GA

I dont know
You tell me…

You tell me…

Whats wrong with BLK?

yes but are the flights full?

if they wernt why would they continute to do the route, or at least downgrade the aircraft!

Lets say the Emirates the loads must have been good on the Afternoon flights hence the 777-300 and the Delta using a 767-400 on there routes they could of chose the use the 767-300, you know what i mean!!

Jon

yes but are the flights full?

Its not a case of whether the flights are full per-se, its about whether they operate with sufficient yield to make them profitable. Its easy to fill a flight to bursting if you charge £1 for every seat onboard an aircraft, the trick is being able to fill the aircraft to a reasonable level with higher fares so as to maximise the revenue generated, and this is where MAN has the advantage over near neighbours such as BLK and LPL. The yield on routes out of MAN is typically much lower than on routes from London and the south generally, however it is stronger than the other airports in the region, primairly because of the importance of Manchester itself as a business destination proping up what passengers are willing to pay. Admittedly LBA is a big business city, but the yields from there tend not to be as strong.

So what you should really be asking is “are the routes sufficiently profitable to continue operating?” Well the major point here is YES, or else they would not operate. The airline world we live in now is very different to that we lived in5-10 years ago. In the majority of cases airlines won’t operate unprofitable or low-profit routes. They will not cross subsidise because to do so they must make extra profits elesewhere, which then leaves their money earning routes open to LCC competition (ooooh…I’m straying into economic theory now, my favourite topic LOL). For low profit routes the airlines are more likely to cancel the flight in favour of better using their resources. If they could afford to go out and buy aircraft to operate every possible route then I’m sure they would, but so long as aircraft are a tad expensive then they’ll not buy so many and instead use them on the most profitable routes they can.

Teh exceptions here ironically include MAS and BWIA dropping servies, they’ve never made great money on the routes and it has taken them until now to do anything about it. At the end of the day though these two airlines are notorious for their lose-making, so this is part of their strategies to match what other major carriers have been doing since September 2001.

As for the claim on PPrune that MAN is a shopping centre with an runway my answer would be “yes, and which succesful airport isn’t?”. Take LHR for example, it would be a loss making concern if it were not for its retail offer. Stockholm Arlanda was one of the first to really term themselves a shopping mall with a runway in the mid 90s. The fact of the matter is that most airports make money through retail, not aircraft charges! If the same people on PPRUNE think that BLK is a profit making airport then they need to think again. The whole point of MANs competitors trying so desperately to attract airlines is to bring through sufficient traffic to sustain a good retail offer. Remember in many cases regional airports are charging very little or nothing for LCCs to land, so where do they make their money from? The aim of all airports is to increase retail, but to do this they must have respectable passenger figures to attract the shops in. The benchmark is a 2mppa airport before you can seek concessions for retail.

If the PPRUNE guys are that concerned about the retail offer at MAN then they shoudl consider this….Micheal O’Leary has a dream that one day airports will not charge anything for landing, and passengers will not pay anything for their flights, why? Well because the retail malls with runways will make all of their money from retail and will pay the airliens to offer free flights to bring passengers to THEIR shopping centres.

Basically I wouldn’t bother with PPRune, I’ve very rarely seen anyone make any sense on there! It was good when it was almost only pilots and operational issues, but its got a bit carried away now!

yes but are the flights full?

Also the asian routes are doing well, with Qatar Airways now daily with A330-300’s absouletly fantastic livery’s! aswell as Emirates about a year ago upgraded to Boeing 777-300’s and Ethiad’s A330-200’s daily service, PIA having around 20 flights a week!

As for USA routes you have got Virgin Atlantic going 9 x weekly to orlando in July! Delta’s 767-400 route to New York-JFK, Air Canada returning to do daily flights to Toronto on Saturday, Flyglobespan offereing Toronto and Cape Town, aswell as Travel City Direct adding Cape Town!

Closer to home Aer Lingus have added an extra afternoon flight to Dublin, Belavia restart there service to Minsk. With Charters airlines adding new longhaul destinations in China, South America, etc, well to me looks ok! but im thinking posative, thinking negative gets you nowhere!

Jon 😀

Good point LBA got to come second to MAN in the number of threads about it.

I give up…

Manchester’s problem is that it’s only grown to be where it is by feeding off of the catchment areas of other airports. It has always really been ‘Manchester, Liverppol, Blackpool, Leeds, Sheffield, Hull’ international airport. Must be close to 20 million people in that area and while ever their own local airports offered no choice, MAN was always going to do well. The problem now is that for a lot of the short-haul market, it isn’t the only choice. If someone had have said 5 years ago you’d be able to fly from Liverpool to Krakow or Riga, Blackpool to Prague or that there would be daily 757 scheduled services from Leeds to Alicante, Palma, Malage and Faro, the white coats would have been on the scene as quick as a flash. But here we are and as people are flying more and more, so the importance of local, convenient, hassle free airports grows. Who wants to battle across the M62, pay a fortune to park somewhere miles away from the airport and then traipse round mammoth shopping malls trying to find gate 200 or something. Give me a £20 taxi ride to the doorstep of my regional airport anyday. The other problem for MAN is that LPL is not only serving it’s own local market that used to go to MAN, but is also pulling in passengers from all over MAN’s catchment area. To most of Joe Public low-cost = Ryanair and Easyjet only and these are the sites they search first, these more often than not have the cheapest fares and this is why the likes of Jet2 and bmibaby can’t get a proper foothold in the Northwest. The final problem is that MAN can’t grow it’s long-haul business quickly enough to keep up with the loss of short-haul business. Long-haul is for now where MAN can still operate without competition from anywhere else in the Noth, but the airlines are vary wary of the yields from MAN especially with fuel cost / tonne where it is today. Most of the non-European hubs are served and it’s hard to see other than the odd quasi-charter flights like bmi / VS to the Carribean, where it can go next.

Put it this way, if shares in airports were able to be traded, I’d be selling MAN and buying LPL, BLK and DSA!

RobT

thanks LBARULES

ill try and put them all on one thread from now on.

Good point LBA got to come second to MAN in the number of threads about it.

…and it’s not as if LBA never gets a mention :D:D:D:D:D

Thing with MAN is its in a central location in the country with proberly the best avation viewing facilites in the UK so its going to be popular.

Am I the only one who thinks this is one of the better topics started by Dave? He seems to ask fair questions….

Still don’t know why we need so many threads on MAN though!

Why am i on thin ice?

To put it straight to the point, a few of your posts could be considered flamebait. This one being one of them.

Well i read that so wanted to check.
Why am i on thin ice?