And credit to LBARules aswell, but he hadn’t posted when I started writing my script above!

And dont forget the likes of Qatar,Malaysian,Delta,American,US from MAN, Air India from BHX, offering more and more long haul flights, good on them I say, if BA doesen’t want to operate the routes, why shouldn’t anyone else? Shows they have missed the boat 🙂

You are all missing the point here (except EK..credit to your comment). The reason the major incumbents based in these countries are unlikely to start many of these routes is that most of these airlines are feeding into major hubs and beyond, its like regional services in Amsterdam by KLM, or into LHR by BA. Qatar for example is not a major market from MAN, but the onward connections are very useful, and as such Qatar is pitching itself against EK in trying to set up a hub. Malaysian does very well out of Manchester because of all the onward traffic to Australia. These routes are only possible because the airlines are consolidating passengers for worldwide flights onto one service and then distributing them between onward services at their hubs. If you look at the US carriers operating from the regional airports in the UK they are only serving their major hubs (note AA and BOS but still developing as a hub for them!).

In the same way it is more efficient for BA to operate long haul routes from LHR because they can use larger aircraft and mix low-yield connecting traffic with high yield direct traffic. If BA were to base an aircraft at BHX for Indian services it would be very labour intensive and costly, so it simply is not worth it. If you look closely you will realise that all of these airlines are operating into their respective bases and hubs, just as BA does!

I’m also tempted to say that routes do not equate to frequencies…I would guess that there are more frequencies from LTN, and therefore more capacity no doubt.

Was gonna post this – Great news for Berlin, but is it really a good thing that they are showing off that Berlin is a bigger base than either LGW/LTN? Must make the management at LTN (Airlines longest base), feel great that they show off about Berlin been bigger!

I don’t understand this…clearly the title is wrong for this Thread, and if you read the article it clearly states that this is the largest hub ‘outside of the UK’ and that Gatwick is bigger!

PIA seem to have had there fair share of incidents with Aircraft at Man, is this due to there operating procedures or just lack of maintenance with there aircraft? Just that with this incident the aircraft involved surly wouldn’t have been heavy to cause excessive brake heat as it’s just had a 6 hour+ flight.

It is fair to say that these things happen, and I don’t think it is a specific PIA issue. The reason you may feel like you have noticed lots of incidents at MAN is that they are actually quite a large operator there, it is their largest operation outside of Pakistan so more flights increases the chance of incidents.

I trust the BBC a bit more…their latest..

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/4307511.stm

2003 aircraft…G-OOBC/D/E and 2004 G-OOBF

LOL, I know they are used in Japan for domestic services…but beyond that and one or two other key asian city links it seemed a strange choice based on the fact that paying for fuel in Japan is going to be fairly similar from airport to airport and I understood the question as being international benefits of fuel differences.

Compared to long haul models there are only a relatively few 747SR and 400D models flying.

Did you also know that the 400D can be altered to the full long haul model at a certain point in life as it is more likely to reach its cycle limit than flying hour limit? So changing to international status allows the hours ot eb increased and cycles reduced.