Manchester: British Airways/British Airways Cityflyer Discussions

[backtrack]

This thread is for topical discussion about British Airways.

 

[backtrack]

BA's fourth destination from MAN has been revealed as Cagliari.

 

[User0001]

Some BA news that I don't think has been reported here.

1) MAN-BLL has gone up to 14 weekly, with a new afternoon flight on Wed, Thu and Fri.
Flights will use a sun air DO-28 jet and the times are as follows:

BA8249 BLL 1240 MAN 1325
BA8250 MAN 1355 BLL 1635

2) BA will run a sundays only service to Olbia in Sardinia, in addition to the Cagliari flights. Flights will operate on
the E170/190 from 27/5/12-23/9/12 and the times are as follows:

BA4541 MAN 0830 OLB 1210
BA4542 OLB 1255 MAN 1440

3) It is believed that the LGW nightstopper is to end for the S12 timetable, but, its also been rumoured that it
will be added later as its needed to connect onto the LGW longhaul.

4) MAN-LHR has increased in frequency for W11, with 8 daily flights versus the current 7.

 

[User0001]

More good news for Manchester, British Airways has today announced that it will fill the void left by the collapse of Skways, and run a weekday service to Gothenburg. Flights are 5 weekly at the moment, but are expected to increase to 10 weekly when an aircraft is based at Gothenburg.

[ Post made via Android ]

 

[Aviador]

More good news for Manchester, British Airways has today announced that it will fill the void left by the collapse of Skways, and run a weekday service to Gothenburg. Flights are 5 weekly at the moment, but are expected to increase to 10 weekly when an aircraft is based at Gothenburg.

[ Post made via Android ]

What sort of aircraft do they intend to use on the route?

 

[lbaspotter]

I'm surprised are British Airways regular user001 has not posted the bad news today that they have announced that is axe its 3 times daily Manchester to London Gatwick flights in March 2013. Hopefully Easyjet or flybe may pick up the route.

http://www.thebusinessdesk.com/nort...-daily-gatwick-flights.html?news_section=4148

 

[User0001]

I'm surprised are British Airways regular user001 has not posted the bad news today

Im afraid I didn't get a chance before it hit the internet.

 

[Aviador]

Another victim of Air Passenger Duty. Unfortunately people tend not to use London Gatwick for interlining connections. Gatwick was more of a point to point route.

 

[User0001]

BA citiflyer will once again operate the Saturdays only flight to Olbia on behalf of Sardinia Holidays.

BA have run the flights for the past 3 year, but, this year flybe had originally won the contract for this summer.

However due to a few contractual issues, BA has once again been given the flights.

Flights are run on the E-190 aircraft, with the flight positioning to/from Glasgow.

 

[User0001]

BA have added a 2nd weekday nightstopper for the Summer 2015 season.

The flights arrive 20:25 and 21:15, then depart 06:10 and 06:50 respectively.

 

[andyc941]

British Airways are going back to 10x flights a day this winter on certain days

 

[Dobbo]

Do BA have any ambition ex MAN beyond the LHR shuttle (and some smaller routes)?

 

[EGCC_MAN]

BA-branded franchise carrier Sun-Air of Scandinavia are reported to be considering a MAN-Groningen scheduled service which would presumably carry BA flight codes. Vueling, who are expanding at MAN are part of IAG (the BA parent company) as are Iberia Express who could also expand. We can't rule out BA Cityflyer looking at some leisure routes with their spare London City Embraers at weekends as they are doing from Stansted this Summer. But it is difficult to envisage BA Mainline returning to MAN in size. The LHR Shuttle seems to dwindle a little further each year and MAN-LGW is gone. Oneworld partner American Airlines has the US angle covered (BA codeshare), and most worthwhile short-haul routes are spoken for. Never say never, but a BA Mainline return to international routes from MAN using their own metal would be quite a turn-up.

 

[User001]

EGCC_MAN pretty much has it covered.

I wouldn't be the slightest bit surprise to see based ops from Vueling and Sun Air.

Sun Air because they are going down the corporate contract route so a potential based aircraft could cover routes from this end, and be able to run more competently the new Groningen flights as well as another potential new destination to come this winter.

Vueling is quite self explanatory as to why they would base here.

American Airlines and Finnair are joint venture partners to IAG, so, profits are shared between AA/BA/AY/IB, with BA driving a fair bit of growth through those channels.

AA has upgraded both JFK and ORD now, supposedly looking into DFW and will make ORD year round again. Here's a fun fact, more passengers on the AA JFK actually book through the BA code than the AA code. So, it's not as 'London Airways' as some think, as the AA JFK owes a lot to BA.

Finnair will be increasing to the A319 on the morning flight this winter, and IB are supposedly going to increase Madrid but not made it to booking just yet.

I do think it's a crying shame that Citiflyer is based at Manchester, yet doesn't operate a single route from Manchester. Hopefully their STN experiment pays off and we see a replica at MAN, after all, STN is a MAG airport and CFE is a MAN based airline, it's not a silly suggestion.

In terms of BA metal, I suppose the night stopper could be used in the same way they did at EDI last year and GLA this year, and run an overnight flight to somewhere like AGP/ALC/IBZ/PMI/MAH, as those routes seem like a licence to print money at the moment.

So, in conclusion, BA is already very big at Manchester, let's not forget BA mainline themselves contribute over 770,000 passengers a year to Manchester, the issue is, their size is not as evident as direct long haul on their own metal, or, the nice shiney A380 that steals the limelight

 

[Dobbo]

I suppose if you take IAG carriers in the round they are probably the largest single "carrier" ex MAN.

It is interesting the different approaches taken by DL/VS and BA/AA. The former predominately use the well known UK brand of VS to connect to its US hubs whereas theatre only use the U.S. brand for the same.

I guess it partly reflects the differing business models either side of the Atlantic, but mostly reflects the fact that DL/VS is not a marriage of equals whereas BA/AA largely is.

I wonder whether there might be some limited merit in BA adopting the Lufthansa approach but I don't see the merit for them. The only scenario I could see this work is if:

1 - critical mass for the LHR shuttle is lost, meaning that BA have to cut services to the bone. This is likely to be caused by;
2 - new competitors (to IAG) start to cover unserved routes where BA father a large market share ex MAN (e.g. West Coast, Japan, KL, Africa, India).
3 - new infrastructure in and around MAN increases the market such that a significant investment can be justified.
4 - BE and their connections come into the frame.

 

[User001]

British Airways have added a 3rd daily Billund flight on Thursdays from 9th June.

New routes to Bremen and Groningen to be announced soon.

 

[EGCC_MAN]

Presumably this is the Sun-Air of Scandinavia franchise using their Dornier 328JET's.

 

[Dobbo]

Interesting quote from this article.

http://www.businesstraveller.com/news/new-british-airways-boss-denies-he-will-a-ryana


Will BA consider flying long-haul from Manchester?

“I’ll give you the same answer I have given my staff, and the answer is “not yet.” We are serving Manchester. We have an inherent interest in the city of Manchester because we have a pretty large call centre there and we have a fairly large number of Executive Club members from the Manchester area who are coming to Heathrow to fly to a number of places, so while I wouldn’t rule it out, at this particular time there are no plans to do so at the moment.

We will continue to monitor what opportunities surface, however. UK carriers’ Manchester propositions are mostly leisure from Manchester - Las Vegas, Florida, etc. Otherwise Manchester is being connected by non-British carriers coming in from the US or the Gulf. So how would BA fit in with that when BA is not strictly a leisure carrier? I don’t know. It’s not entirely out of the radar but it’s not in the immediate radar.”

 

[User001]

Obviously I can't say too much on this, but, Alex does love Manchester, hence he moving away from the 'BA will never serve long haul ex-MAN' mantra to 'never say never'.

BA has the slots but lack of aircraft at the moment to increase long haul ops from LHR, so, we won't see anything for a while on this front, (I'm talking years away), but rest assured, as LHR gets to breaking point, and Gatwick follows suit, if no decision is made on the runway, we WILL see long haul from BA at Manchester.

 

[Dobbo]

That is good to hear. Issue will always be that it is likely to be cheaper and with more options to route BA via LHR than the direct MAN service. That is, unless a major investment it made.