Hainan Airlines

[Dobbo]

It's great to see the amount of interest in the wider region from the Chinese carriers.

I very much hope to see this develop, together with the existing CX and SQ services and hopefully new entrants from the Far East (in time) like MH, TG, JAL, ANA.

The lack of third runway at LHR or a second at LGW really does seem to spread activity away from The South East.

 

[User001]

The RoutesOnline article has now been amended to show on the last line:

Manchester is also expected to welcome a new direct link Into Shanghai from Air China, although some final licensing issues and suitable slot acquisition at Pudong International Airport are understood to have delayed its launch until October 2016 at the earliest. It is also understood that Hainan Airlines will also introduce a twice weekly link to Manchester from the city of Xi'an in summer 2017

 

[Manniashraf]

One month left for the Hainan start !!! Any news on loads for first couple of flights and what's it looking ahead! Serious and most aggressive route for Manchester personally

 

[User001]

Loads are reportedly in the high 80's for all summer and early winter flights, some flights higher. Obviously we know the route is going daily in January, with Xi'an to follow, which shows the good loads and yield must be there too.

I think the next 24 months have seen some historic route announcements.

Even as little as 2 years ago, who would have thought we would be seeing Beijing, Shanghai, Los Angeles and San Fransisco start within 12 months of each other. Each route hugely important for their own reasons. Truly incredible stuff.

 

[Aviador]

Obviously we're not privy to information such as the revenues generated on the route but generally speaking an 80% load factor is regarded as good. Fingers crossed it works for them.

 

[Dobbo]

I think the next 24 months have seen some historic route announcements.

Hi User

Do you mean the next 24 months will see historic route announcements or the last 24 months have seen some historic route announcements? A case could be made for either...

 

[User001]

http://www.thebusinessdesk.com/nort...r-direct-china-flights.html?news_section=4148

I don't agree when these sort of articles come the other way, and I certainly don't agree with our area doing them too.

While there is nothing exactly controversial in the article, the headline will be doing nothing but rubbing salt in the wounds and winding people up for no reason.

I wonder why the media can't just leave it.

 

[Brum X]

As you say, there is nothing controversial in the article at all and just goes to prove that our 2 cities are fierce rivals in every sense, both airport and city.

Still waiting to hear exactly what happened to our flights, everybody have gone quiet.

 

[Aviador]

Probably because it sell newspapers. There is and probably always will be rivalry between regions and stories like this will always draw attention from within the region and from outside the region for that reason.

 

[Dobbo]

"Click bait"

 

[User001]

5 days to go!

 

[Land23R]

Any update on what the early loads are looking like? Previous indications were pretty encouraging from what I recall.

 

[User001]

Majority of flights are in the high 80's until October. A few nearing 96% but some are also around 50% at this time, there doesn't to be either a trend or reason for the lower loaded flights.

Post October, some 80's loads but mostly 65-70% at the moment.

 

[Land23R]

Thanks for the update. I suppose it's inevitable some flights will have lower loads although high 80s to 50%
does seem a wide variation. Post October is 4-5 months off so 65-70% at this stage looks pretty good. Will some be block seat bookings by tour specialists? - I guess the pattern of how far in advance the rate of bookings is will only become clearer after a while.

 

[David_itl]

The thing to remember that a 60% full A333 would mean that if it hadn't have had the capacity boost, we would be talking 70% loads.

To put some actual numbers in place. 60% A333 load is approx 175 passengers. Based on 4 weekly, its roughly 208 return services for approx 75,000 passengers a year.

 

[User001]

Well it's being commented in aviation circles that in the current climate where new routes to China are either getting postponed, cancelled or have very low loads, Manchester has broken the trend in that it looks to be a 'better than expected' route launch, hence the increase to daily come January.

It will be interesting to see what the main drivers are that has helped Manchester be the outlying success compared to say, Hainans PEK-TLV route which seems to be loaded to about 40-50% at best, which started only a few weeks ago so similar launch times to the MAN flight.

 

[EGCC_MAN]

Israel's population very slightly exceeds 8 million people and there is basically no scope to draw in extra business from across the neighbouring land borders. TLV has very limited appeal as a hub for political reasons. Meanwhile, MAN never miss the chance to refer to "our catchment area of 22 million people," it may actually be slightly higher for a route such as this and there could be some connecting business as well. There is a considerable number of Chinese students, ethnic Chinese, business and cultural links in our region. Then of course we must add in the British customers who visit China for reasons of business or tourism. Basically, there is a big difference between holding a near-monopoly position on a route from a large catchment area (MAN) than from a small and highly restricted one (TLV).

 

[User001]

Hainan have really gone to town to launch Manchester, I don't think they have done this for a new route before, advertising 'Hai-man-chester'! Will be used on the first flight on Friday.

 

[David_itl]

Why do I have to work on Friday? Is it still scheduled for a 6am arrival or will it be put back to a more media friendly 9ish? Suppose the other side of the equation has to be what the forward bookings for Cathay Pacific are. If they are still as high as they currently are achieving then that should be a major achievement for a "regional" airport;there was always potential for some CX traffic to operate onto mainland China. In hindsight, it may just be a blessing that Shanghai has been put back into the pending tray rather than announced as it ought to allow a bit of bedding in time for both the Beijing and Hong Kong routes to co-exist rather than splitting the Chinese market.

 

[andyc941]

Gosh Hainan have really gone big with promoting the flights. I see on Hainans social media page, they are promoting the delivery of their new B789. I wonder if we might see one on Manchesters tarmac in the future.