Manchester Airport Forum | NVR into July

I have heard that Ryanairs MAN-MAD flight should be loaded for winter within the next 2 weeks.

They are releasing their schedules in phases apparently, and this is one of the last ex-MAD to be released. And its still bookable on amadeus.

Depart Mon, 12 Nov MAN to MAD –
Ryanair – Flights 3187 2h 50m
Take-off Mon 18:50 MAN Manchester, ENG, United Kingdom
Landing Mon 22:40 MAD Madrid, Spain

Our newcomer Rufus Roughcut, had some questions in the previous thread and I think he deserves a better answer than what azz767 gave 'I cant see it affecting EK because it is widely used for connections to Australia'.

I would like to look at it in a wider and more historic perspective; and not only for MAN, but UK as a whole. If we look at the UK CAA statistics between 2006 and 2011, there are three regions that have had a growth every year in this period, and it was Western Europe-Other (non-EU), Middle East and South America. Middle East had in 2011 7.2 million passengers to and from UK, while Western Europe-Other had 14.5 million passengers. The reason for me bringing in Western Europe-Other is that 36% of the passengers were flying to and from Turkish destinations and a small or large share of these flew with Türk Hava Yollari/Turkish Airlines.

The UK CAA statistics only pick up the three large ME airlines' passengers only to be heading to and from the Middle East, and the 39% growth during these five years can be misleading. I think we need to look at the combined passenger numbers for the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Austral Asia and the growth for the combined area was 12% during the same five years. This last number is of course much large the total UK growth during the same period - actually the passenger numbers declined 2.3%. As a comparison the Western Europe-Other passenger growth was 27% in the same period.

Now we have established some facts and we may better be able to answer the two questions Rufus had:
1. Do people think this will detrimentally affect the current Mid-East airline capacity by taking passengers away from them?
2. Or is this a positive move creating extra passenger throughput, rather than diluting current loads/yields?

Turkish Airlines and the MEB3 are for a large part fighting for the same potensial passengers. It all depends on cost/performance. If Turkish Airlines deliver a superior product compared with the MEB3, passengers will flock to THY. More competition for the same number of passengers will always lead to putting pressure on the yield. If we look to the Northwest region, the growth seems to be some what limited (MAN is "stealing" passengers from LPL and LBA these days - and the region as a whole has a very slow growth). I will not rule out a MEB3 reduction if THY succeed in their efforts, but the MEB3 are known for not giving in easy. The result can be sweet for the potensial NW passengers - lower prices, better service and more space in the short run. The question is which of the four airlines that have the deepest pockets? Anyhow, this fierce fight is for only around 8-10% of the international bound passengers in the UK - and for MAN it was in 2011 for even a lower share of the passengers (around 7%).

Interesting stats as ever "KGL" BUT the implication is that those airlines are after the same maximum volume of passengers.

My underststanding is that we still have a very significant percentage of potential pax who are within the Manchester catchment area but for a variety of reasons are still flying from Heathrow, even Gatwick etc.

I count this as an area North of Birmingham across to Humberside then back over Yorkshire and Cumbria.

Do you have any stats or the % pax from these areas who use LHR and LGW ?

This is the market that Manchester s/b clawing back !!

No need to be rude.

We are all of different views, opinions and knowledge here - can we please keep things civilised.

Cheers

Lowcost longhaul is a tough market. The longer the flight, the less money the airline makes. Air Asia X haven't been as successful as they expected either and have reduced their network map.

SQ will presumably plod on with the 773ER or the A359 when they get it. Can't see them using the 787 as that is planned for regional flights.
Lowcosts depend on aircraft turnrounds to make money. Four flights a day make more than just one long one as it's the ancillary revenue (onboard sales, food, booze) that are the profit centres. SIN-MAN is pushing the 777 out to its maximum and two six-hour flights would earn more than one twelve hour trip up here. SCOOT will probably stay in Asia-Pacific for the foreseeable future, just like Air Asia X and their A333 fleet.

As promissed in #31. Below are tables showing origin/destination for terminating passenger at both LHR and LGW. These numbers are from the UK CAA Passenger Survey Report 2010.



As you can see I've also added for good measure the same numbers for MAN. It clearly shows the large share of passengers that have Yorkshire and the Humber as their origin or destination.

Now to something similar, but not quite. I've looked in to 12 hubs used to reach international eastbound destinations, and how their market shares at MAN have changed over time.



First I need to tell you these numbers comes from UK CAA Statistics. I have also grouped these hubs in a certain way. LGW/LHR is obvious. AUH/DOH/DXB are the home hubs for MEB3. FRA/IST/MUC/SIN/ZRH are important Star Alliance hubs. AMS/CDG are important SkyTeam hubs.

I don't know the O&D share from MAN to these hubs, but I do know the charter share is minimal. Anyhow, things has happened during these last years at MAN with the MEB3 as the big winners and I guess it's no doubt British Airways being one of the clear loosers with the significant drop in traffic to both LHR and LGW. At the end of May all four hub groups have a market share between 27.2% (MEB3) and 22.8% (London hubs).

Let us now compare the hub traffic with the changes in MAN's total passenger numbers. I have used 2006 as a 100% level for all groups. Since the traffic to the London hubs shows a so wastly different development compared with the three other hub groups, I have selected to show the London hub traffic separately.



Now to the surprise I indicated in #31: The passenger decline for the 10 foreign hubs stopped full 18 months earlier than MAN as a whole. In the last two years the traffic to the 10 foreign hubs has had a growth of 24.6% while the growth at MAN at the same time has been 8%. The traffic to the two London hubs continued to decline and during the last two years the decline was 9,7%.

Since all this was started due to a question related to the Turkish Airlines increased capacity at MAN, the last two months shows over 20% increase in passenger numbers to Istanbul compared with the same months last year. The Turkish Airlines expansion can be compared with a bee stinging the MEB3. Is the facilities at IST up to it for being an important international hub? I doubt it. Three of my colleagues traveled to Ankara through IST with Turkish Airlines this week. They were very pleased with Turkish Airlines, but had no praise to say about Ataturk International Airport. They used only one word to describe IST: Chaotic!

LN-KGL

Thanks as ever for taking time to do the analysis. Fascinating.

I can only add to your colleagues comments about Ataturk Airport as a transfer hub....a nice shiny airport to look at, but chaotic and totally unsuited to efficient transfers. Passport Control is my idea of hell here. Taking the domestic transfer to Ankara is familiar to me, you virtually have to go out of the main terminal, through a covered walkway and into another badly laid out building that seems to confuse everyone.

TK will take the cheap vfr transfer traffic to South Asia and tourists on a strict budget to other places, I will avoid it where ever possible. It goes on the same list as LHR and CDG.

TK as an airline is ok but on a long haul business trip, you want better than ok, that's why the other *A carriers and the MEB3 will not be concerned about losing any higher yielding pax to TK and IST.

Yes, thanks for the analysis LN-KGL.

The real surprise for me was not so much that the decline through foreign hubs stopped much earlier than MAN's performance overall, but that over 38% of MAN's pax originate or had a final destination outside the North West. This compares to only 24% at LHR and 21% at LGW from outside the South East if I'm reading the figures correctly.

How does the CAA arrive at the stats? From passengers home addresses and itinerary information for inbound pax from abroad? I assume they include both UK and non-UK originating pax?

The 20% from Yorkshire and Humberside is both pleasing and worrying. It's good that they decide to use MAN at present, but as one or two of us questioned, will the new 4 times daily LBA-LHR service affect us (recently mentioned on Leeds thread on pprune), even if it is initially a slot-holding routine by BA?

MANDIV, the questionnaire used for LHR in 2009 looked like this:
http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/81/LHR2009.pdf
I guess the questionnaires are similar these days too - adapted to each airport of course.

The 2010 survey also shows an even finer picture of the terminating passengers at MAN



The 2009 survey had even more information about other regions, and MAN the two largest counties in Yorkshire and the Humber region were:
- West Yorkshire: 1.7 million passengers; 9.5% of MAN's passengers
- South Yorkshire: 0.86 million passengers; 4.8% of MAN's passengers
Next on the list (in size) was Derbyshire County with 326,000 passengers, then North Yorkshire County with 306,000 passengers, ...

I'm trying to find out the transfer share at the London hubs. The CAA statistics tells us the total number of passengers and the CAA survey tells us the number of terminating passengers - and the difference is the passengers that continues to outside UK.

Edit:
The share of MAN 2010 passengers not terminating at
LHR: 60%
LGW: 32%
That was surprisingly easy to find out - only by combining survey and statistics results.

MartinJW12: that's correct, although if I'm being pedantic and correcting myself its actually 147 available seats after the 6Y seats are blocked off for crew rest.

As for a 767, rumours have been floating for ages although coincidentally they came up again recently in work. I'd expect one on the EWR run certainly at some point in the short/mid term. Some of their 767's ( i think -400's) have a large Y capacity increase and only a small J cabin increase which is nice and realistic for us and much more doable. Its something like 20J and 236Y, as Opposed to the current 757's which are 16J and 153Y. After DL axed JFK that traffic is really helping UA with loads and yields to EWR, which were always good anyway. So the extra Y capacity could mop up extra traffic and there would only be 4 more J class seats available, so there isnt the pressure of having to fill some 50J seats which come with the 777's. The J cabin now is usually full or close to so 4 more available is very managable. As I've stated previously UA makes a lot of money from MAN. Interestingly I also heard for the first time that a second IAD may be on the cards. Not heard that one before. Although I stress these are rumours haha! The IAD route has become nicely established now and looks like its outstripping the EWR on quite a few occasions in the coming weeks, certainly load wise. Very pleasing to see.

As for other grumbles and rumours, speaking to FR flight deck the other day and he asked 'how will T3 cope when we add aircraft 5 and 6 for summer 2013?'. But then again as we all know if all rumours from airline staff were true we'd probably have an EY or QR scissor hub and a BA Asia operation by now!

Sam if you are talking about Man United I think you will find that they are going To South Africa ( 18/7 Durban 21/7 Cape Town) and China ( 25/7Shanghai) on their Pre-Season Tour..........sure its not coming from the States......If it is My money's on Open Golf Charter.......Which is at Lytham and starts on the 19th July.

Should be N236SG, or N322SG, the Atlas Air/Sonair B747-400's.

I'm afraid you're not quite accurate enough, vanguard

Combined May and June;

domestic up 5.97%
international scheduled up 12.06%
charter down 14.58%
miscellaneous up 200%

Overall..... up 2.96%

Worries me too as thats what pays the bills, truth is however its the economy and if people have to wait a bit longer and ship by sea then they will. However sea freight rates seem to be on the up or maybe not depends on what you believe will happen. This may switch a bit back to air. Plus as we get closer to Christmas then air cargo demand will rise.

avid why are you combining may and june when the reference was to june only?

report at the time of the May stats

"The charter market remains challenging for many of our airlines. However, boosted by the Jubilee weekend and the later than usual spring half-term school holidays, we anticipate that June will be a stronger month for the charter operators, as the continued strength of the pound in Europe offers holidaymakers incentive to book last-minute deals."

What clouds the charter market is all the scheduled flights to the normal "charter" destinations

Before you get too full of 'doom and gloom' world_rep, do we know how much of the fall in freight is attributable to freight only flights and what the situation is on freight carried on pax a/c? Presumably, it's the impact on the latter that is the concern you are referring to.




T'was me in fact David that suggested 3% for the 2 months. I really must improve my guesstimating techniques. But hey, 2.96 rounded to 1 decimal place is 3.0% after all


LN-KGL, are you able to confirm from the leaks that MAN-OSL by SAS is increasing to 6 x weekly in S13?