PaulRO

Yes, Manchester MAN is indeed seen by some as a bit of "an all place", but in the 1990s I commuted from AMS to MAN on CX. There was a daily flight. and now they return.

MANchester has the second largest Chinatown (population) outside of Asia. Not at all strange that CX eye it.

With due respect, your comment reveals a lack of world knowledge and of historical perspective.
With more bons voyages, it will improve. Bon voyage.
And when you check out ChinaTown in Manchester, bon appetit.

orbitmic

With equally due respect, while I am sure that my world knowledge does leave a lot to be desired and that I am ignorant of much of the world, if there is one place on which I am probably not entirely unaware I think it is Manchester having spent many years with a partner based there and commuting there most regularly as a result.

Chinatown in Manchester is lovely, I like it a lot. It is not the second in the world outside Asia in population (for instance, can you tell me which of the following you believe have a Chinatown population lower than Manchester's?: New York, San Francisco, Sydney, Vancouver, etc). I have no idea about exact figures, but for what it's worth, Wikipedia sees it as second in the UK and third in Europe after London and Paris http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatown,_Manchester

I can only reiterate that I was surprised that CX reopened MAN. Most of the China-Europe traffic (including HKG) is ex-China and currently driven by Chinese tourist and business destinations. MAN is an obviously important city in both the world and Chinese maps and I am not surprised at all that there are links to China from there, but I was surprised that it would come from CX in the current climate as in recent years they have narrowed down their long haul coverage in a very drastic fashion only flying to a handful of cities on every continent. I personally didn't see MAN and ZRH coming, let alone DUS.

Hopefully, it is a change of strategy and CX have decided to regrow their wings in which case I am delighted.

brunos

Hi Orbitmic. I am surprised that you are surprised by MAN and ZRH.
ZRH is, like HKG, a big financial capital. It was only served by one small A340 by LX, often full in premium cabins. MAN has a huge wealthy region and CX already has 5 flights to LHR (2 by BA) and cannot grow there. Some airlines even fly into Birmingham.
DUS, I have no idea.

Also, the replacement of 747s by smaller 777s (and soon A350s) also help.

stimpy

Where Chinese airlines are really adding flights, increasing way more than Europe, is Africa. http://www.traveldailymedia.com/2216...rican-flights/

These are business destinations rather than tourism. I'm sure that NCE and LYS are way down the list from a dozen or so African destinations.

brunos

Way more? Only 3 and 6 flights a week. But indeed from zero that is a huge percentage increase.

Goldorak

For tourism, yes (even more than 3 months), but it is also an important business destination and this is year round.

orbitmic

With due respect, I think that is a very "AF/Parisian" vision of the Cote d'Azur rather than the reality of the airport's traffic. Nobody here is claiming that NCE will replace Paris let alone London in terms of traffic, just that it has potential for a small number of additional intercontinental routes in coming years.

Traffic is simply not as seasonally skewed as you make it. It is definitely lower in winter months (600k-800k/month November-February) but there are 7 months/year above 1 million pax (July and August are about 1.3 million each, April or October about 1 million each, May, June, and September are in between. We are not talking huge differences across the 7 summer season months here). So in effect with a rough average of about 1 million pax/month, the weakest month is about 30% less and the highest month about 30% more. Traffic is far more intercontientalised (if that's a word!) than AGP.

As brunos mentions mentions, at the very least DL, EK, AC and QR do or want to fly there. I agree that there will not be dozens of intercontinental destinations in the short of medium term, but on the basis of what we are discussing here, it is simply not the case that the traffic is only busy three months a year.

And as mentioned by Goldorak, the area is by far the second largest conference and business destination in France and that mostly works in shoulder season (April, May, September-November) rather than peak tourist season (June-September).

Finally, NCE has one of the highest premium traffic % in Europe, As frequently discussed on the BA forum, getting 14-18 rows of C on NCE-LHR is not infrequent at all, and both DL and EK J tend to be full most of the year.

Why? Some airports are predominantly origin, some are predominantly destination, and some are a bit of both.

You mention AGP but that is far more leisure-skewed than NCE, and a better example despite lower traffic would be VCE.

VCE is even more a "to" airport than NCE, but intercontinental destinations (year round or seasonal) include JFK, ATL, EWR, PHL, YYZ, YUL, ICN, DOH, AUH, DXB (ie 4 US on 3 airlines, 2 Canada on 2 airlines, all three ME3, and one Asian). That is despite having a smaller hinterland than NCE and 3 million fewer passengers than NCE a year!

I can think of a number of other similar examples both in Europe and beyond which are far more "to" unbalanced than NCE and yet have a much larger intercontinental network than NCE from EDI to CUN.

brunos

And remember that supply creates demand.
The number of direct LH pax from/to NCE will always be small compared to SH, but it is hard to guess a priori for any LH route to/from NCE.
AF has experienced with direct flights to USA from the provinces and that was not a success apparently. Hence the current dogma of only flying LH exCDG. But that does not mean that others cannot succeed. Air Transat and Air Canada seem to have been rather successful on their direct flights to Montreal. It can be an attractive gate to USA/Canada as well. Maybe AA will wish to compete with the daily DL too. With smaller efficient planes and a profitable economic environment. AA is likely to open new destinations.

NickB

It is easier for DL, AC, EK, etc....to serve secondary destinations in France long-haul than for AF: they will be serving these destinations from their hub and therefore pooling traffic to NCE through their hub. AF would have to rely pretty much exclusively on O&D traffic.
That is why, for instance, you find quite a few US or Asian airlines serving cities like MAN or EDI while BA has no intercontinental flights from these stations.

orbitmic

I agree, and indeed, I cannot imagine AF opening intercontinental routes ex-NCE (or for that matter ex-LYS, MRS, etc bar Antilles which works from a number of regional airports). Of course, on the other hand, they may choose to code share on flights which principal responsibility falls on a partner as they do on the DL NCE-JFK flight (so I could imagine them doing the same on a hypothetical MU or CZ flight).

Of course, at the same time, the very fact that AF could not open those routes themselves (and clearly won't) is fully compatible with the notion that any airline opening such intercontinental route potentially deprives AF of some of its connecting traffic to/from large French regional airports such as NCE, MRS, and LYS. For instance, I think that the combined impact of TK and EK has severely dented the AF share of the NCE-Asia//Asia-NCE traffic. This is particularly true of premium traffic whereby all competitors offer a "full trip" C/J/F experience where AF obviously only offer domestic segments in Y.

From that point of view, the comparison that you make with the UK is fully relevant: BA is not in a position to offer sustainable long haul flights ex-large British regional airports (bearing in mind that an airport such as MAN is vastly superior in traffic to one like NCE which has the same "status" as first regional airport of an equally large country in principle) but the fact that others can has seriously dented BA's share of the UK regional traffic over the years and they are certainly not the "obvious" choice of many travellers to/from British regions any more.

brunos

Indeed, that's is true for the "national" airline in most countries.
For example, LH has hubs in FRA and MUC and foreign airlines attack on secondary airports like DUS.

Getting back to NCE, BA and LH/LX are already major competitors to AF one-stop longhaul traffic and the frequency of NCE-CDG is not that great. As Orbitmic said earlier, they will also suffer from Qr and other foreign longhaul airlines flying into NCE.

stimpy

But BA and LH have been competitors in this area for decades. That's nothing new. And even with that competition AF used to run lots of flights to NCE with business class. Generally full as I recall. What changed is a lot less people booking business class. Plus post 9/11 security hassle made the train a better option for many.

I used to fly LAX-NCE quite often in the late 90's. I prefered BA F because that was the only flat seat that existed til LH F came to LAX. But I also hated BA because of LHR transfers. FRA was no peach either. If I was flying biz class I preferred AF. All the airlines had awful biz seats back then.

But nowadays with AF finally adding flat biz seats and running pretty well coordinated transfers at CDG, I would still choose AF if I had to transit somewhere. Assuming the price was roughly the same of course.

Transfers at LHR = NO
Transfers at FRA = NO (unless first class or HON)
Transfers at DOH = NO (always at terrible hours)

I've never transited IST but I've looked at doing it several times and the timing is always terrible.

orbitmic

Af didn't stop offering c on domestic flights to CDG because fewer people fly business, just because they wanted to lower costs on domestic flights and hoped premium pax would 'tolerate' a domestic in y before a long haul in f or j because domestics are short flights (notwithstanding the fact that CDG to nice is longer than to FRA, LHR, gva, ams, etc). In fairness many other European airlines have made the same choice and I think the only majors that still have domestic c on some routes are lh and ib.

I remember your mentioning on another thread that 12 pax in premium economy was certainly enough to consider some success, my LHR-nice typically have 10-18 rows of c (occasionally, a few each year of those I take are well past 20). Those rows are invariably full so we are talking about 30-70 pax x 7 daily flights each way plus the lcy and lgw flights which also have healthy (but typically smaller - 5-10 rows) club Europe. I have no doubt lh and lx fill theirs too as do tk, az, su, and many others obviously including kl. So I simply don't think overall j traffic has gone down.

Fully agree with you on ba/lh being implanted for years, but tk and su for fewer years have had a strong effect, as has ek and as would any further competitor. And sure the long haul full flat helps, but ultimately, while I agree with you connecting at CDG is now relatively easy (muc, hel, cph, zrh, fco, mad, and soon ams are all easier, ist and doh are easy too), if going, say, nce lax or nce Bkk why should I prefer af over trips that are all c/j and in some cases all fully flat as well as cheaper because af always charges the same from regional airports as from CDG which pays a hefty premium for the nonstop. We pay the same premium (in fact a bit more) without the advantage.

stimpy

First of all I wouldn't call FCO or MAD easy. Especially during the summer when they poorly staff the transit immigration and the lines are horrendously long. That can sometimes happen at CDG, but generally it is much better than FCO or MAD. And like I said above, transfers at DOH and IST generally happen at non-optimal hours. And of course you wouldn't want to use QR or TK on your way to LAX. For BKK, I'm not a fan of splitting the trip into two equally long flights. I prefer a long flight followed by a short connection. I recently had the choice of BA or QR for a trip from Singapore to LYS/CDG. Looking at the connection times I decided against QR even though it's a nicer airline and I'd earn a lot more TP's. I chose to take the very long SIN-LHR flight with BA and get 8+ hours of sleep even with the horrible transit at LHR. I didn't have the option of AF on that trip, but I wish I had.

orbitmic

I'm not too sure what you don't like about IST transit times. For NCE, there are two daily flights, outbound, one connection bank is about 2pm (connecting to day flights) and the other around 9pm (connecting to night flights, just like AF has lots of flights to Asia and South America leaving around 11pm). Returning into NCE, the first connection bank is about 8am after night flights (just like the largest AF bank after overnight flights), and the other one is about 3pm after day flights ex-most of Asia, arriving into NCE at 5pm. I personally find those connection times perfectly convenient. I would add that the TK lounge at IST is truly excellent, not nearly as good as the CDG P lounge but possibly slightly closer to it than to the CDG J lounges.

DOH is a different matter, their main connection bank (as for EY and EK) is around midnight - 2am which I don't really like and find inconvenient.

My experience at FCO and MAD is at odd with yours, I have had consistently very smooth transits including much better than at CDG in July-August. I also find IB MAD lounges much better than AF CDG ones, and AZ and IB J class vastly better than AF, BA, and LH alike.