At the moment it is doubtful that they can fill a 500pax.

EK transported 387 passengers per flight ex-MAN on a 77W in August (48,000 passengers on thereabouts) which is 60% loads on their A380HD version. I’m not anticipating them having an A380HD in service for 2 years at least, which leaves them plenty of time to push themselves to over 400 passengers per flight; the A380 should allow them to push prices down a little bit more to effectively compete against SQ and Jetstar (if they start SYD-MAN by 2010).

So top of the list were HKG, JNB, PVG, BKK, MIA, NBO, RUH and THR.

Err…RUH is already available! 2 weekly on SV (pretty good loads as well I believe). Initial blurb announcing Servisair Pernauille getting the handling contracts said they hoped for daily services eventually.

HKG = need the Russians to play ball with 5th freedom rights as CX are unable to work out that successful MAN long-haul routes do not double drop! The routing would be HKG-SVO-MAN using A340s taking a longer time than HKG-LHR-MAN though. (Probably AY via HEL is the quickest route though).

JNB = best plans for SA to resume can be safely ruled out given their financial positions. BD would be next best, but they’ll be focusing on LHR long-haul only for at least 3 years. Lon…oops British Airways…it’s gonig to be a cold day in hell before they consider adding any more UK regional long-haul. VS perhaps when the 787 comes along (but they’d probably focus on the BD routes) Which leaves Flyglobespan who did announce 2 weekly services but is not on their website.

PVG = more likely to see Air China in 2009 with a Beijing service as that’s they’ve been provisionally allocated!

MIA = we need BA and AA to gain anti-immunity protection so AA can relaunch and this have BA play ball as AA were to an extent relaint on getting cruise contracts with BA not wanting to codeshare as they wanted the premium payers to route MAN-LHR-MIA!

NBO = is being targetted by MAN; KQ did apply for slots this year though. Possbiility for 2009 onwards. Can’t see any British airline wanting to fly it though.

THR = we did have IKA with Mahan Air. Once they have EU authority to come to the EU again, perhaps we might see them back at the 5 weekly frequency. Don’t think IR have enough equipment to start flying here.

BKK = long rumoured (my recollection stems from a 3 wkly TG MD11 service via BRU back in 1992!). MAN does allege 100,000 passengers a year route MAN-wherever-BKK so once TG gets appropriate equipment, they might want to fill a void by doing a Kangaroo service which MH offered i.e. MAN-BKK-Australia (or MAN-KUL-Australia in MH’s instance). Might be a problem though with SQ as both are part of Star Alliance, with SQ going daily from October and the prospect of 10 weekly services held out in the medium term.

I don’t ever remember seeing a World Airways.

99% sure it would have been doing an “affinity charter” where “like-minded” people (e.g. the Alderley Edge Steam Train Appreciation Society) would charter an aircraft to go to somewhere like New York where they were expected to visit members of the “New York Anglo-Appreciation of Steam Train Heritage” but ended up forgewtting about the “planned” trip and just had a break in New York instead.

1978/1979 were good years for seeing PA and TW (they seemed to alternate Sundays) with their 707s operating in summer; saw 2 PA 707s in one day, and if one casts their minds back, seeing 748s at Dan Air Engineering being looked at by them (my favourite being a Bouraq Indonesia variety!).

If you look at the make-up of the VS LHR routes and LGW routes, something ought to be noticed: LGW = glorified bucket and spade routes, with the 744s being configured differently to those at LHR. I would imagine they are unlikely to start routes which might be more business orientated out of LGW for the time being.

However, don’t be too suprised that some of the American carriers keep some services out of LGW given that (I guess) they would be able to feed those services from their hubs.

I would not take as 100% accurate what Flightcheck reports – by the time they get the print run sorted, 1,000,001 changes may have occurred to the programme. The times published may be correct, but I’d rather wait for the 1st aircraft to turn up on a scheduled basis, as opposed to the ad-hoc and diverted services that I’ve seen.

Does Saudi operate into Manchester or was the aircraft leased??

With 2 777s arriving one wonder if that meant two lots of water cannon salutes!?!) as the “proper” scheduled service was running late – SV112 operated into MAN from LHR in mid-afternoon with SV121/2 operating early evening. Suffice to say that I saw neither aircraft.

It’s not the 1st time SV have had a 777 in MAN – one came in about 2 years ago, and rumours of a thrice weekly service using L1011s was mentioned way back in 1987, though we had periodic SV 747F freighter flights (including one by Korean Airlines which I missed!)

If you reckon crudely that 75% of the 1.1m were connecting onwards into the US and of those 25% were from the LBA area, that’s a 200,000 opportunity. BRS-EWR, supposedly a success, carried 85,000 people in 2006. BFS-EWR was 102,000.

But it all depends on the business class market and how full that is. It’s no use for CO to carry 110,000 pax on LBA-EWR in 105,000 pax are not paying the premium fares and are upgrading a large number of economy passengers into the business class.

I the success of NCL-DXB will be a interesting one to watch to see whether this might work elsewhere

I rather than the EK dipping it’s toes thing occurred back in 1990 when it began MAN ops. Since then it progressed to daily MAN, introduced daily BHX, gone to 2 daily MAN, introduced daily GLA and gone 2 daily to BHX; none of that takes into account the increase in capacity each route has had!

By the look of the MAN stats though, the LBA-Florida market is the bigger fish to chase, as is the eastbound connecting market. LBA-XXX-pakistan, far east, australia etc is a big market lost to MAN at the moment

Why on earth would you want LBA-XXX-Pakistan? That’s implying that LBA-Pakistan would not be viable as a non-stop service. What should be the main thing for LBA is to improve the runway so that the small widebodies can do a 6 to 9 hour flight without the needs to stop en-route with no traffic rights, unless you’d prefer all LBA long-haul services go one-stop and leave MAN/BHX with non-stop with it’s perceived “attractiveness” in terms of getting a passenger to wherever in a more timely manner. Hopefully I’m wrong about the constraints of the LBA runway in this regard.

Is G-LSAA based at NCL? It’s been floating around MAN for the past few days.