2017 Achievements

[ethanegcc]

In addition to the '2017 Predictions & Aspirations' thread, now 2017 is upon us, I have started a new thread to summarise the achievements of MAN during the year, which may have been on our aspiration list.

I thought it would be interesting to see how many aspirations we are able to achieve.

To begin with:
-Oman Air is now fully bookable and will begin from 1MAY17
-Emirates has all A380 operations
-Cathay Pacific have increased the frequency of HKG-MAN

Any more you can think of, when comparing to our aspirations/predictions?

 

[Aviador]

Tough question, very tough question. For the time being there are still lots of positive things happening but I fear this may change by around the middle of the year.

Continued Brexit uncertainty, the threat of further terrorist events in Europe & the Mediterranean in general, not to mention each and every time Donald Trump opens his mouth, things could very easily turn sour. Fingers crossed I'm completely wrong though.

I've abstained from voting on this occasion.

 

[ethanegcc]

This pretty much sums up my response to be honest, but I hope we can continue to add achievements to this thread.

 

[groobs]

You can add the recently announced Royal Air Maroc service to Casablanca.

I can't see 2017 bringing us any new routes to the US or EU because of the issues mentioned above. However it could bring us more niche routes further afield, just not as many as we enjoyed in 2016.

 

[EGCC_MAN]

Actually, we have lots of new routes to the EU to look forward to in 2017 but it is easy to overlook them due to the operators being familiar based carriers such as RYR, EZY, EXS, MON, BEE. It is new-name short-haul operators which are less obvious at this point, though on the charter side we can look forward to the return of Enter Air and the establishment of based operations by ASL Airlines [B73G] and BA Cityflyer [E190]. We also do have increased US operations courtesy of Thomas Cook and Virgin Atlantic, though the loss of United Airlines to IAD offsets this somewhat.

I have to agree with the cautious stance adopted by Aviador and others regarding the global economic and geopolitical outlook. Both France and Germany face major elections this year, and Italian banks continue to spook the markets. Terrorist activity remains an imponderable, though there appears to be no shortage of deluded excrementalist halfwits with overtly malevolent intent. Expectations of Trump are so low that he may yet surprise to the upside. Like him or not, he has been serially successful in business for decades. And he has the advantage of not being Hillary ... about the only Democratic candidate available who was so bad that even Trump could beat her. Trump is actually less in favour of US intervention in foreign wars than she was.

 

[ethanegcc]

-Direct links to San Francisco
-BA Cityflyer base
-RAM to Casablanca

Hopefully, despite, what others have mentioned, we can add: daily Beijing and a Vueling base at least.