Chinese Charters

[User0001]

Re: China Southern Airlines

At the last count, the MAN-China market was almost twice the size of the BHX-China market. Its part of the reason airlines like Finnair and Singapore Airlines serve Manchester.

 

[dazzler]

Re: China Southern Airlines

At the last count, the MAN-China market was almost twice the size of the BHX-China market. Its part of the reason airlines like Finnair and Singapore Airlines serve Manchester.

BHX has approx. 110 destinations, MAN 205 approx, so Manchester's portion of almost any market apart from maybe India will be bigger. The two cities have similar numbers of Chinese diaspora.

However Birmingham's superior business connections would benefit from a direct link to China. Whilst Chinese investors are throwing money at East London's business park and Manchester's airport city, In Birmingham Nanjing Automotive, Wing Yip, Resorts World, Jaguar Land Rover, House of Fraser, and local manufacturing SME's need the connectivity in a city more than double the size of Manchester and a region of 2.6million people. The West Mids sold £4bn of Exports to China last year while importing £2.3bn

 

[User0001]

Re: China Southern Airlines

Dazzler,

MAN-China is twice the size of BHX-China despite the 'advantages' Brum has, and, based on CAA stats, MAN has 4.8 times more yield potential too.
The market size is based on postcode origin as well as indirect traffic (so even if somone travels to LHR from a Manchester postcode by car or train, it still counts as a MAN catchment stat.)

So, despite your claims about Birmingham, makes no difference to the market sizes it seems.

 

[dazzler]

Re: China Southern Airlines

Dazzler,

MAN-China is twice the size of BHX-China despite the 'advantages' Brum has, and, based on CAA stats, MAN has 4.8 times more yield potential too.
The market size is based on postcode origin as well as indirect traffic (so even if somone travels to LHR from a Manchester postcode by car or train, it still counts as a MAN catchment stat.)

So, despite your claims about Birmingham, makes no difference to the market sizes it seems.

These aren't claims. These are facts. I applaud Manchester for developing an excellent and superior facility. However Birmingham & West Midlands manufacturing industries and businesses are not advantages. They are customers which Airlines and Airports should serve better. I don't want to travel to Gatwick or Manchester to take a flight anywhere and would rather use Delhi,Dubai,Frankfurt or New York as a hub than land 3 hours from home after a long-haul flight.

Especially as I work in the shadow of BHX. I speak to their staff almost weekly and some of them fear that it's turning into a glorified shopping centre.

A lot of businessmen and students here for don't have UK postcodes let alone B'ham or Manchester ones. People working here should be NOT travelling north to take long-haul business flights. It's a major inconvenience which we simply accept.

If an airline can't serve a city of over one million people (That's not a claim by the way) Then they need seriously need to look at their marketing. BHX are trying to catch-up but it seems MAN has a god-given right to all UK scheduled long haul outside of London.

 

[Aviador]

Re: China Southern Airlines

I agree with you dazzler. The only point I would like to add is that some routes are going to be thin on the ground so they require a much larger catchment area to be sustained. Until China routes become established here in the UK, they may well fall into this category. It may be the case that now Manchester has won the battle to secure new China flights, other airlines may hold off starting new flights to China from other regional airports until the Manchester service proves itself.

 

[User0001]

Re: China Southern Airlines

Oh dear. I fear this could get messy, but, here it goes.

Firstly, I stated 'your claims', as, for example, the city of Birmingham may be twice the size of the city of Manchester, but, due to the way in which Manchester is split up (for example Salford is a separate city but only separated from Manchester by a 90ft river, I bit like how London has several cities in its core), the metropolitan areas of both are roughly the same size.

A lot of businessmen and students here for don't have UK postcodes let alone B'ham or Manchester ones

But, they do require a postcode while staying here (unless they are staying in some kind of no-mans land). The CAA calculate the postcode they used to get to the airport, as specified on their booking or API. Therefore, the number of people staying within the 1 hour catchment of MAN was twice the size of the same at BHX. Im sorry if that offends your beliefs, but if you are willing to pay approximately £299, the stats are clear to see via the CAA.

Birmingham & West Midlands manufacturing industries and businesses are not advantages

Of course they are advantages?!? If you have a market that can be bolstered by business, of course it is an advantage against another area.

but it seems MAN has a god-given right to all UK scheduled long haul outside of London.

See, this is why I think emotion plays up too much here. When trying to build a robust argument, Im afraid you loose me at comments like this, as its obvious reasoned debate will be hard to come by.

At the end of the day, The market is what it is. MAN is the larger market for China. Despite what is in the BHX area, MAN has historically had the larger yield and larger traffic flows. There is no point getting techy with me about it, speak to the people using the flights. Blame those in the BHX catchment that, despite big billboard posters claiming they don't want to travel via London, do not put their money where their mouth is and offer a corporate contract to get a Chinese route going.

At the end of the day, its not about 'the God given right to long haul flights', it about what the market wants. Why do you think EK sends First Class to MAN (and now 3 other airlines) but not BHX. You cant blame that on people travelling away from BHX, they are the same airline so by buying more expensive tickets would show EK the demand is there

Anyway, that's all I will say on the matter, as like I say, I can see this getting messy, and frankly, no amount of discussion on here will change the facts on where the market is right now.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Re: China Southern Airlines

As has been said municipal city boundaries are of extremely limited use these days in calculating density of population of a city region because for various reasons, often based on local, petty, parochial politics, some city municipal boundaries expand as the urban sprawl spreads out whilst others don't. The result is often a municipal city being much smaller than the physical 'city' it lies within or lies next to.

Eurostat the EU's stats agency has tried to overcome this with the concept of the Larger Urban Zone (LUZ) which calculates the population of the conurbation and associated satellites. Even this is not the complete answer and they don't regularly update their figures either.

The latest publicly available are for 2008 and this link lists the top 127 LUZs in Europe.

London is the largest (or was in 2008) in Europe with 11.9 million inhabitants just ahead of Paris with 11.5 million.

The top five UK provincial LUZs are (or were in 2008) Birmingham no 21 in Europe at 2,284,093; Manchester no 23 at 2,240,230; Glasgow no 31 at 1,747,100; Leeds no 37 at 1,499, 465; Liverpool no 41 at 1,365,900.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larger_urban_zone

 

[dazzler]

Re: China Southern Airlines

User001,

If I quote figures, I have read them and most likely have a source. The population of Birmingham is 1,113,000. The population of Manchester is 510,000.
BHX has 110 destinations. MAN has around 205. These are facts. The import/export stats I gave you are from the UK Trade & Investment, They a UK Government department. It’s from March 2014. FACTS.

The metropolitan areas are roughly the same size, (although Greater Manchester likes to add small villages in Derbyshire & Merseyside to bump up the figures), and that’s exactly why Birmingham should get more European short haul, East & West long haul connectivity. What national business ignores the whole of the Midlands ?

I took a flight recently from BHX to MBJ and met people from London who had travelled up on the West Coast Main Line to fly to Jamaica saving them hundreds on BA’s huge fares from Gatwick. They said it was easy and would do it again, but larger airlines don’t see this, they just get excited about 3rd runways, pile everything into LHR, and give MAN the crumbs. BHX and everywhere else gets nothing.

The market and the people want more long-haul from their airport. There is a demand for it here, but our national airline has overlooked us and other airlines choose to go elsewhere forcing consumers
to travel long distances at great cost to take flights. If Birmingham has a presence and the routes they will be utilised. I don’t care about EK sending First Class to MAN to take professional footballers to Dubai.
If we had that here it would be well used, we have the commerce and demography to support that. Resorts World/Genting did their feasibility study and found that there are enough professionals and high net worth individuals to warrant spending millions building their first urban resort in Europe here so if they can open their eyes to what is in and around Birmingham, others can too.

And that’s a real market we are talking about. As I’m not sure what you know about the Birmingham/Midlands market and where it is.

MAN bosses think they have millions of people within 2 hours from Manchester in their catchment but forget that most of them in Staffordshire, the West Midlands and East Midlands have a quicker and easier drive to another airport. Birmingham Airport is also the only airport on a mainline railway. So easy access from London, Coventry, Rugby , Leamington Spa, Stafford, Wolverhampton. No changing trains or getting connections, a direct link. It’s all opportunities missed.

I don’t want the debate to get messy and I personally don’t think BHX should be trying to outdo MAN in any way because they cannot, and I respect and admire the achievements by MAN but any airline from the US, Far East or China will prosper here as much as MAN maybe even more. The city of Birmingham needs to be connected. We can’t make the airlines start routes or BHX route development any better. If you think I’m emotional maybe the travel costs my company pays transferring to London and time we lose connecting in Amsterdam or Frankfurt makes me that way.

And I’m not writing posts on the Manchester thread as Mancunians don’t have anything to complain about and I’m not bothered about an airport 100 miles away, however you are on the Birmingham threads talking about Manchester-China markets, grand gestures, putting money where our months are and Hong Kong flights. That doesn't help us.

 

[Brummiegem]

Re: China Southern Airlines

dazzler although I agree with much of what you say,and MAN may well have won the battle to get a Chinese service(although no start date yet!)I think the real battle starts now for MAN.That is keeping hold of said flight.Front end pax are needed to keep this flight going.All very well filling Y section and perhaps a few in Business,but will there be enough to keep the route going???
We will know only when the flights start.
What I find interesting and annoying in equal amounts is if you ask Chinese people or even Americans for that matter how many English cities they can name and you can only guarantee London as an answer.Some may know Stratford(Shakespeare)or Liverpool(The Beattles).
Manchester will usually only be known by football fans which is of course the be all and end all of business. Yet they all know the names of Jaguar,Land Rover and Bentley,but,not where they are made.
All it proves is that outside of our green and pleasant land the tiny townships of Birmingham and Manchester are not that well known.London I am afraid will continue to be the main entry/exit point for many visitors corporate or otherwise for a few more years yet.

 

[Ray Finkle]

Re: China Southern Airlines

However Birmingham's superior business connections would benefit from a direct link to China. Whilst Chinese investors are throwing money at East London's business park and Manchester's airport city, In Birmingham Nanjing Automotive, Wing Yip, Resorts World, Jaguar Land Rover, House of Fraser, and local manufacturing SME's need the connectivity ........ The West Mids sold £4bn of Exports to China last year while importing £2.3bn

I agree our region is doing a booming trade with China and it's not just the larger companies like JLR, LTI, SAIC, NVC Lighting etc....... but also the smaller companies with many in the supply chain to the likes of JLR, but, despite all this, where is Emirates third daily service to hoover up all this demand? Where are Finnair with all their connections to the Far East? After three years of hard work why was there 'only' three charter flights to China and after proving a successful market test why is there still no prospect of something more permanent with 'just' a longer programme being planned for 2015?

BHX suffers immensely from the huge gravitational pull of LHR where multiple frequencies are offered to satisfy the very high paying customers with tickets for the rest often being sold very cheap and for many airlines most, if not all, of the Greater Birmingham area would be seen as within the Heathrow catchment area. Multiple frequencies are also a big pull for the Midlands higher yielding passengers, having your employee sat around for a day or two because the flights to your destination only operate 3 or so times per week is very counter productive, especially when you have an airport only an hour away that will get them there when they need to be there morning, noon or night. Sadly the custom lost to London doesn't register as demand from BHX, Mr Kehoe himself has said when someone from the Midlands makes a journey to London to fly somewhere it's not counted as a Midlands passenger but a London one, it's why they push the connections so much. Heathrow is the 'wrong' side of London for BHX and the worst thing from a BHX point of view would be more expansion there.

The airport are trying to change this but it is a massive task and one that will take many, many years, if it's ever done. Read the consultative committee agendas, BHX are constantly at conferences and trade events trying to make businesses aware of what's on offer locally, they've recently spoken to Amtek who are an Indian company with a large base in Coventry and SAIC about possible business to China but try talking to the boss of a company and saying 'please stop travelling an hour away to an airport with X amount of flights a day to your destination and use ours where we fly there 4x per week, oh and it'll cost you an extra £200 per ticket!'

Heathrow is the default airport for many in our area and the sheer amount of variety they have cannot be underestimated as a draw for the Midlands higher yielding travellers. Those at BHX have to change an attitude that's been ingrained for decades and I don't envy them but it's a chicken and egg situation, if BHX can't provide the flights then customers will go elsewhere, if customers go elsewhere then BHX won't be able to provide the flights :s_dunno

As for the whole Birmingham vs Manchester thing, the Greater Birmingham region is very similar to the Greater Manchester region and for that matter the Greater Leeds region, all are a similar size and all have their own good points and bad points but when it comes to airports BHX and MAN are lights years apart, partly down to years of massive under-investment in BHX and partly because of geography where Manchester is far enough away from London to be the natural next step for airlines and again the Midlands is probably seen as a large part of that catchment area.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Re: China Southern Airlines

Ray, that's an accurate and succinct a summary of the dichotomy that challenges BHX as one is likely to read anywhere.

It's not only LHR either. You will know that I've been trying to fly from BHX again to Australia with Emirates but all the offers for premium classes are directed towards LGW with this airline as they have been in recent years.

Living in the West Country I prefer BHX for long-haul over LHR or LGW but the airlines don't give a tinker's cuss because they know that I'll use London if they tempt me with fare offers. I can't believe I'm alone in this.

 

[Brum X]

Re: China Southern Airlines

One thing BHX has one over MAN is Air India, i bet they are quietly "miffed" with that one.

Proves though that MAN does not have a right to all Long haul outside London.

 

[User0001]

Re: China Southern Airlines

Dazzler,

You seem to be ignoring what I have written by selectively replying to odd points rather than the bigger picture.

Add to that the snide comments embedded in that post, i think the debate should be left from here as the chance of getting a reasoned debate from you is slim to none.

Ive been on enough forums for long enough now to reslise that when people start making backhanded comments such as yours, things can only go one way, downhill.

 

[User0001]

Re: China Southern Airlines

BrumX,

Again, a bit childish there do you not think?

You are capable of reasonable debate 99% of the time, so why jump on the bandwagon with comments like that?

 

[Brum X]

Re: China Southern Airlines

BrumX,

Again, a bit childish there do you not think?

You are capable of reasonable debate 99% of the time, so why jump on the bandwagon with comments like that?

Its friday night, i feel like being a bit childish, LOL

 

[Ray Finkle]

Re: China Southern Airlines

It's not only LHR either. You will know that I've been trying to fly from BHX again to Australia with Emirates but all the offers for premium classes are directed towards LGW with this airline as they have been in recent years.

Living in the West Country I prefer BHX for long-haul over LHR or LGW but the airlines don't give a tinker's cuss because they know that I'll use London if they tempt me with fare offers. I can't believe I'm alone in this.

Gatwick probably has similar issues to BHX with Heathrow the main draw for most of London. On another thread I recall someone mentioning Emirates reducing prices ex BHX to fill their seats, although I'm not an avid studier of their fares whenever I have looked BHX is pretty much on par with MAN, sometimes slightly higher, sometimes slightly lower but more often than not they're comparable, the same goes for sites such as Expedia. Your experiences seem to confirm that BHX is not heavily discounted, compared to LGW anyway, but money talks and if I was in your shoes I'd probably do exactly the same.

One thing BHX has one over MAN is Air India, i bet they are quietly "miffed" with that one.

Proves though that MAN does not have a right to all Long haul outside London.

Naughty naughty :spiteful: :s_tongue

 

[thunderchild]

Re: China Southern Airlines

Once again a simple discussion gets turned into a BHX v MAN debate. Can we move on?

 

[Brum X]

Re: China Southern Airlines

Once again a simple discussion gets turned into a BHX v MAN debate. Can we move on?

Yes we can, ive moved on already. :rockon: :rockon: :rockon: :rockon: :rockon:

 

[dazzler]

Re: China Southern Airlines

Dazzler,

You seem to be ignoring what I have written by selectively replying to odd points rather than the bigger picture.

Add to that the snide comments embedded in that post, i think the debate should be left from here as the chance of getting a reasoned debate from you is slim to none.

Ive been on enough forums for long enough now to reslise that when people start making backhanded comments such as yours, things can only go one way, downhill.

Well user 001.......

As you are the MAN moderator maybe you should leave the BHX/China Southern debate from here, and let posters who care about BHX/Birmingham and want to see it prosper to continue. Meanwhile I have some CAA catchment area analysis stats to read up on.

We can move on Thunderchild, but I believe Manchester cheerleaders should stay on the Manchester threads.

 

[User0001]

Re: China Southern Airlines

Dazzler,

Please do grow up.

These are open forums for anyone to post. If you dont like it, one word really, tough!