In fact Lufthansa who I beleive are taking over BMI now would probably welcome cuts from the UK regions to LHR, as it would push more passengers via Frankfurt.

LH did increase the number of pax they flew out of MAN last year; it’s now nearly 570,000 with a growing number transferring to destinations like Hong Kong, Beijing and Mumbai. They have said that they are monitoring the situation and may look to add more services to the BD set up, both at MAN as well as LHR in due course. This, of course, does imply that bmi regional doesn’t appear to be on course for a sale as why add routes if you won’t be able to feed them?

Virgin (florida and carribean) and soon to be Jet2 to New York( i think and hope).

Don’t forget that we’re losing Virgin’s St Lucia service at the end of March. Jet2 will only be operating LBA-JFK. What MAN needs now is the instant availbility of 787/A350 which should improve economics on most of the existing portfolio of routes!

If you’ve seen the BD reasons, there is a small hint of a crumb of comfort:

Crain’s Manchester Business: “However, these services have never performed to the levels that we had hoped. Our Chicago service has been at best a moderate success up to this year. However, a combination of higher fuel prices, increased competition and the impact of open skies at Heathrow has had a serious negative impact on the route’s viability”

Whereas Business Traveller has:
“Nevertheless, Chicago has generally been a success up to this year, when a combination of higher fuel prices, increased competition from both American Airlines in Manchester and some impact of additional capacity to the USA as a result of open skies at Heathrow has had a serious negative impact on the results. The reduction in seats due to the introduction of lie-flat beds in business class and a world leading premium economy cabin late last year has regretfully led to no significant increase to overall revenue, and we have been unable to generate an improved price for our much improved premium products in the Manchester market. “

Now seeing that AA had a daily 767 prior to BD starting-up and maintained it throughout, what increased competition are they talking about unless it means that AA is about to enhance MAN ops by going 2 daily 757s to ORD?

BMI (WW) will be the first to go, espically with the high competition from FlyBe.

Well the “big news” announcement for MAN on 5th Nov takes on a new twist. Perhaps along the lines of WW actually rebranding back to mainline and/or regional to provide better connectivity. LH have previously stated that a fair number of business class pax transfer onto their BOM services, so I wonder if the lesiure routes may be foresaken in favour of Virgin with a view to starting to some of the destinations that have the biggest concentration of business class passengers connecting onto LH.

I remember the ex B-Cal DC-10 doing flights to the Caibbean in BA colours, the twice weekly 747 flight BA118 to Islamabad and a 747 cargo flight (can’t remember the destination). And was it the DC-10 that did NY before the 767 or was it a TriStar?

The Barbados and Orlando services were both 2 weekly 747s routing up from Gatwick. Never had 747Fs operating on a regular basis (think it was no more than 5 “charters” to Atlanta).

It was L1011s to JFK which then became DC10s (routing from LGW) then 747s (routing from LGW) before becoming the proper offering ex-MAN two-class 767s (J30 Y 183) which seemed to have served them so well before the embarrassment of having profitale regional long-haul ops saw them go to the 3 class 767 and become “uneconomic”. On another forum it’s reported that premium passenger numbers were not in decline but very steasy and “lots of people routing MAN-LHR-JFK”, then with the closure of the MAN base i.e. sold to Flybe, crewing costs increased quite a bit. They willed it to make a loss, and verily it came to pass.

With this order, Airbus now has thirteen (13) customers for the A318, the smallest member of the A320 family.

Errr…they are not exactly a new customer for the A318. They had around a dozen on order prior to the “Future Size and Shape” review which resulted in the planned replacement of 737s at MAN and BHX with the A318 being dropped in favour of the RJ100s, the RJ100s moving from LGW, the 737s at MAN and BHX going in the opposite direction, 737s moving from LHR to LGW with that A318 ordered converted into an A319 order with the A319s being based at LHR. That should be as clear as mud:confused:

haha suppose. I mean over the pond :diablo:,

Perhaps you’re too young to remember the Wardair 747s – pretty sure a Canadian airline also operated 757s to LBA as well (Odyssey? Nationair?)

I firmly believe that there is a market for British Airways to operate point to point type flights from places like Manchester, Glasgow and Birmingham to major cities in Europe, North America and possible the Middle East and Asia.

However, that plan is dependent on BA actually using the oneworld alliance to enhance each routes viability. So far, BA has been particularly clueless in using it, and on those routes where it has the ability to codeshare with partner airlines, it chooses not to on some as it affects their LHR service and may offer up the prospect of them artificially routing the less-than-premium payers on to the regional services which ultimately makes them less viable.

I’d like to see the looks on BA’s faces should a recession start with companies cutting back on air travel, specifically premium air travel. Now let’s think of the reason why they’ve raised the white flags in the regions: lack of premium travel. So any recession has the potential to be disastrous for them given their stupid, myopic decision to give up on anything non-London.