Archive Route Development & Rumours

[Scottie Dog]

I noticed that Arkia appear, with very little publicity (I wonder why), to have started their service to Manchester.

Flight AIZ931 arrived from Ben Gurion at 12:07 yesterday and was operated by A321 LZ-FSH.

 

[gulftraveller]

Yes. Departed an hour late from MAN and diverted to Amman. I believe it is still there.

 

[HX3]

gulftraveller, if you were looking via flightrader24 or similar, they regularly show diversions to Amman, or Beirut, but I believe it is a glitch due to radar blocking due to the ongoing situation in Israel.

 

[gulftraveller]

Could very well be. But it was not showing as arrived at TLV.

Indeed that does appear to be the case...

 

[Scottie Dog]

ACL report for S25 is now available.

Highlights are as follows:

New destinations (for S25)-
Islamabad
Memminggen
Tunis
Amritsar
Djerba
Lahore
Rabat
Tours
Rennes
Chisinau
Jerez
Salerno
Chambery
Grenoble
Skopje
Luxor
Turin
Avignon

New airlines:
Air Blue - 180 slots
Emerald Airlines UK - 1,680 slots
LOT Polish - 840 slots
Nouvelair Tunisia - 138 slots

Changes to slots held: (Highlights)
Air Canada - +208
easyJet - +1,201
Emerald UK - +1,680
Jet2.com - +2,631
Loganair - -271
PIA - +540
Ryanair - +5,926

Hopefully I've read the summary correctly.

 

[David_itl]

Just picking a few of those.

Luxor potentially easyJet
Skopje, none of the airlines operating there would also add MAN except for Wizzair? Unless it's Jet2 deciding on a new city break?
Amritsar - would say Air India but they have bigger markets to serve at MAN Not sure who else would offer it,
Tunis and Djerba. Would Nouvelair Tunisie offer both? Djerba would be more for a UK operator,

 

[HX3]

Is Djerba not Easyjet as they operate there already.

 

[BlueManc]

On the ACL report it lists Milan Linate as a new destination. Easyjet and Ryanair serve Malpensa. Who is down to serve Linate?

 

[Capitol 203]

Didn't ITA apply for LIN a couple of years back? If they can get their cost structure right it could be successful route given the city centre location.

 

[gulftraveller]

I believe that the LIN slots are for EJU.

 

[Scottie Dog]

I don't know if thus will work but SPD_TRAVELS is reporting Air Blue to fly to Islamabad twice weekly from 18th March - subject to CAA approval. Flight will operate via an intermediate point in Turkey.

 

[Scottie Dog]

IndiGo have applied to serve Manchester to Delhi with a daily B787-9 (lsd from Norse) from July 1, 2025

https://www.instagram.com/stories/ri...91264772434319

 

[Scottie Dog]

This thread seems to have been a little quiet of recent and so I thought that I would post what little I have come across for this Summer:

Ryanair - are withdrawing totally from Billund. This is due to a fallout with Billund Airport over taxes. This route has been served for many years - having initially been a service operated by Sun-Air Scandinaviaon behalf of (if I remember correctly) Astra Zeneca. Back in October 2000 the monthly passenger count was 1,962. October 2024 has 4,448.
Ethiopian - RingwayReports suggests that from 3rd July Ethiopian will reduce their service via Geneva to just twice a week (on Wednesday & Sunday). However they will add a flight via Marseille on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. This will be a nett gain of 1 flight per week.
Pakistan - Potential start of direct services by Air Blue, Indigo/Norse and PIA, will be delayed until at least June 2025 due to awaiting the results of the CAA report which is due in 1-2 months. Information courtesy of Sean M on Twitter.
Biman Bangladesh - in recent schedule update revised planned service to Manchester during Northern summer 2025 season. From 28APR25 to 12JUL25, the airline is suspending the two weekly Dhaka – Sylhet – Manchester service. Information courtesy of AeroRoutes
Singapore Airlines - it is general knowledge that we lose the connecting through flight to Houston, however does mean that there will be additional seats available for sales SIN-MAN-SIN as there is no need for a percentage to be held for SIN-IAH passengers.

Information from a well informed friend provides the following -

EasyJet is looking like one extra based, this being a third A21N. Healthy and welcome growth, though probably sub-10% in terms of extra seats. Jet2 is pretty mature at MAN; I’d be quite surprised to see a double-digit percentage increase from them.
Virgin and Aer Lingus UK are looking pretty much like-for-like with S24.
Corendon and Luxair appear to be trimming frequencies.
Several carriers are strengthening their programmes:
Cathay - Remains daily
Etihad - Summer 24 was daily, Summer 25 is showing as 12 per week.
Gulf Air - Summer 24 was 5 per week and appears to remain so.
Hainan - Remain daily
Juneyao, Summer 24 was 3 per week. Summer 25 is showing an increase to 6 per week.
Kuwait Airways - Appears to stay at 3 per week but with an upgrade to A339
Qatar - Continue at 3 daily.
Royal Jordanian - Summer 24 was 3 per week. Summer 25 is showing 5 per week.
Saudia - Appears to stay at 6 per week to Jeddah.

General overview:
According to Matt995 on Pprune, TUI will not bring in any short-haul ACMI at MAN this year. We had 3 x B38M from Smartlynx in S24 July through September. The core fleet is listed as 16 units (including the TUI Nordic B789); I counted 17 last Summer, though one may have been serving as a spare. There is talk of an extra B787 finding it’s way to MAN, though uncertainty over where this is coming from (and whether it is already factored in to the quoted 16 if another type has reduced presence). Ryanair have trimmed planned new services - almost certainly due to late deliveries from Boeing, which will resolve eventually - though MOL never passes up the opportunity to blame tax rises.

Hopefully more information will become available other the next few weeks.

 

[BLB777]

This thread seems to have been a little quiet of recent and so I thought that I would post what little I have come across for this Summer:

Ryanair - are withdrawing totally from Billund. This is due to a fallout with Billund Airport over taxes. This route has been served for many years - having initially been a service operated by Sun-Air Scandinaviaon behalf of (if I remember correctly) Astra Zeneca. Back in October 2000 the monthly passenger count was 1,962. October 2024 has 4,448.
Ethiopian - RingwayReports suggests that from 3rd July Ethiopian will reduce their service via Geneva to just twice a week (on Wednesday & Sunday). However they will add a flight via Marseille on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. This will be a nett gain of 1 flight per week.
Pakistan - Potential start of direct services by Air Blue, Indigo/Norse and PIA, will be delayed until at least June 2025 due to awaiting the results of the CAA report which is due in 1-2 months. Information courtesy of Sean M on Twitter.
Biman Bangladesh - in recent schedule update revised planned service to Manchester during Northern summer 2025 season. From 28APR25 to 12JUL25, the airline is suspending the two weekly Dhaka – Sylhet – Manchester service. Information courtesy of AeroRoutes
Singapore Airlines - it is general knowledge that we lose the connecting through flight to Houston, however does mean that there will be additional seats available for sales SIN-MAN-SIN as there is no need for a percentage to be held for SIN-IAH passengers.

Information from a well informed friend provides the following -

EasyJet is looking like one extra based, this being a third A21N. Healthy and welcome growth, though probably sub-10% in terms of extra seats. Jet2 is pretty mature at MAN; I’d be quite surprised to see a double-digit percentage increase from them.
Virgin and Aer Lingus UK are looking pretty much like-for-like with S24.
Corendon and Luxair appear to be trimming frequencies.
Several carriers are strengthening their programmes:
Cathay - Remains daily
Etihad - Summer 24 was daily, Summer 25 is showing as 12 per week.
Gulf Air - Summer 24 was 5 per week and appears to remain so.
Hainan - Remain daily
Juneyao, Summer 24 was 3 per week. Summer 25 is showing an increase to 6 per week.
Kuwait Airways - Appears to stay at 3 per week but with an upgrade to A339
Qatar - Continue at 3 daily.
Royal Jordanian - Summer 24 was 3 per week. Summer 25 is showing 5 per week.
Saudia - Appears to stay at 6 per week to Jeddah.

General overview:
According to Matt995 on Pprune, TUI will not bring in any short-haul ACMI at MAN this year. We had 3 x B38M from Smartlynx in S24 July through September. The core fleet is listed as 16 units (including the TUI Nordic B789); I counted 17 last Summer, though one may have been serving as a spare. There is talk of an extra B787 finding it’s way to MAN, though uncertainty over where this is coming from (and whether it is already factored in to the quoted 16 if another type has reduced presence). Ryanair have trimmed planned new services - almost certainly due to late deliveries from Boeing, which will resolve eventually - though MOL never passes up the opportunity to blame tax rises.

Hopefully more information will become available other the next few weeks.

Excellent summary, however just want to point out that Saudia are increasing to daily, Turkish going 4 daily, Juneyao going daily and Etihad double daily from August. Virgin also increasing LAS to nearly a full season service

 

[Scottie Dog]

Many thanks to those who have commented, either on this thread or by messaging me directly. It would appear that I might have done better to have picked August, rather than July, for my comparative month but that's life.

 

[David_itl]

The downside for VS seems to be that to run LAS, the JFK & ATL frequencies are trimmed to 6 weekly and 5 weekly respectively

 

[Land23R]

The downside for VS seems to be that to run LAS, the JFK & ATL frequencies are trimmed to 6 weekly and 5 weekly respectively

So unless MCO runs twice daily throughout the summer, does this mean there will only be 3 VS flights on some days?

 

[Curious Pax]

This thread seems to have been a little quiet of recent and so I thought that I would post what little I have come across for this Summer:

Ryanair - are withdrawing totally from Billund. This is due to a fallout with Billund Airport over taxes. This route has been served for many years - having initially been a service operated by Sun-Air Scandinaviaon behalf of (if I remember correctly) Astra Zeneca. Back in October 2000 the monthly passenger count was 1,962. October 2024 has 4,448.
Ethiopian - RingwayReports suggests that from 3rd July Ethiopian will reduce their service via Geneva to just twice a week (on Wednesday & Sunday). However they will add a flight via Marseille on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. This will be a nett gain of 1 flight per week.
Pakistan - Potential start of direct services by Air Blue, Indigo/Norse and PIA, will be delayed until at least June 2025 due to awaiting the results of the CAA report which is due in 1-2 months. Information courtesy of Sean M on Twitter.

Shouldn’t affect Indigo/Norse as they would presumably be operating to India not Pakistan.

 

[LS@MAN]

A little nervous to read ref Ryanair trimming planned new services…I have 5 return flights booked between Manchester and Toulouse for business and leisure purposes between March and October, this is a new twice weekly service that hasn’t been served since 2019…with this being only twice weekly through the summer I hope it avoids the chop

 

[Scottie Dog]

I found this on Ringway Reports and thought it was worthwhile sharing.

Let's see what arrives: