I wonder if he will bring some more Long haul routes to MAN like they used to 🙂

We had recent discussions over why there is no major BA long haul presence in a recent thread…did you miss it completely?????

Anyway, could be interesting. BA is different beast to Aer Lingus, it operates from one of the worlds most important business centres (unlike Aer lingus, sorry folks of Dublin, but its true), it has a major hub which relies more heavily on feeder traffic, and it makes most of its money from premium traffic (and is therefore heavily business orientated, with respect to frequency etc).

Should be fun to see what he does, I don’t think the typical BA customer would be happy to have their economy food taken away from them etc though, BUT I’m not going to say it won’t happen!!!! He seems to be an intelligent man, and his appointment will have been subject to understanding how he is likely to take the firm forward, and therefore I think the board must be happy that he will please the shareholders (again many of whom are likely to be unhappy with the removal of frills).

I think what’s happening is CO’s widebodies are required elsewhere to soak up their rapid route expansions of late.

I don’t think this is the case, I believe CO would prefer multiple flights because they can then offer more connections throughout the US (this is certinaly the officiel line, and also makes sense to support a hub operation!). The choice to remove the 777 reflects the fact that the MAN market is not strong enough to support a 777 and 757, so the increase of 21% should reflect the additional connecting opportunities without saturating the market.

The use of the two aircraft will increase capacity per week by 21%.

Yes, he was doing good things at the company..must be said. Lets hope his eventual replacement is a bit more forward thinking than some of his/her predecessors.