Is Manchester Airport subject to bias

Is Manchester Airport subject to unfair bias?

So, this is the next installment of my opinion pieces, and oh boy, is this going to be a controversial one. I’m expecting a lot of flack for this one, and likely to loose the odd follower, but, it’s a viewpoint I’ve wanted to put across for a while, but, never really had the time or energy to put it down in words, but, I’ll give it a go tonight.

Throughout a lot of my adult life, I’ve observed aviation forums and social media, as well as luckily work in the industry. In that time, I’ve always had a soft spot for Manchester Airport. It was the airport Id come as a kid to watch the aircraft, it’s where most overseas holidays began, and its where my love of aviation began. 

I know it’s not the perfect airport, by any stretch. Yes, it’s very rough around the edges, yes it’s staff have perennially been cast as rather surly, and yes, it sees more than it’s fair share of moans about the security queues, and thus, it’s the airport a lot of people love to hate. But, it’s also an airport that punches well above its weight. It handles almost 30m passengers (pre covid) and the majority of those 30m were locals, origin and destination traffic and not the typical transfer bolstered figures some airports enjoy. It doesn’t have a flag carrier airline based offering a wealth of routes around the globe, but does have a rather enviable list of carriers serving the airport, from Singapore to American, from Icelandair to Ethiopian and everything in between. For a regional U.K. airport sharing the same hunk of land as the megahub that is Heathrow, Manchester does bloody well for itself

Manchester Airport doesn’t have a huge tourism draw, like Barcelona, Palma or Venice. It doesn’t have the business draw of Frankfurt or London, nor does it have the transfer passenger draw like Amsterdam or Madrid. But make no mistake, it does actually have a lot on its doorstep, a lot that’s clearly still waiting to be discovered properly. National parks, castles, historic cities as well as a fair chunk of high value business like Bentley, THG, Astra Zeneca And Ineos.

What has all this got to to do with the unfair bias?

Well, back to the point about me observing forums and social media. This is where Manchester gets a lot of flack.

‘Why would anyone want to fly to Manchester?’. ‘Manchester is a yield wasteground’. ‘That airline/route couldn’t possibly work’. You name it, I’ve read it. I used to try and fight this arrogance, but to be honest, it’s a waste of time. I’m all for free speech, but some of these comments come from people that couldn’t even point to Manchester on a map, never mind profess to be an expert in its field.

Today, my frustration came to a head with the news that British Airways CityFlyer (BACF) has pulled its weekend operation at Manchester (and Stansted) in favour of Southampton. Now, when BACF started its Manchester Routes, us ‘MAN-supporters’ were reminded almost weekly that ‘these flights only serve Manchester because London City is closed on most of the weekend’, and reminded that the LCY closure was the only possible reason this was done. And fair enough, that much is true. However, fast foreword to the SOU operation being announced, and suddenly, there isn’t the ‘looking down the nose’ typecast of ‘its only because LCY is closed’. No. Instead we are seeing ‘how wonderful this news is’, ‘it’s because SOU has a wealthy catchment’ and ‘how innovative’ from the very same people on the forums that poured cold water on the very similar Manchester operation. However, please don’t confuse that with any sort of hate for Southampton. Hats off to them for pulling this off, and my words are not aimed at crapping on Southampton’s good news, my words are aimed at the forum reactions to that news, which are 2 different things entirely.

Now, the above paragraph may seem like I’m just throwing my toys out of the pram, but, it’s a genuine puzzlement, why when it’s ‘those northerners’ it seems to envoke one set of responses, but anywhere in the south of the U.K., it’s envokes an entirely different set of responses. It’s been this way for as long as I can remember. Is Manchester always doomed to be type cast? Does it not matter how many prestigious carriers and routes it obtains (Singapore Airlines, Emirates, Qatar, Ethiopian, American etc), people will always have the opinion Manchester is some barren, yieldless wasteground that any airline is just bonkers to consider? What do we think MAN has to do to be taken seriously on the world stage and particularly in the AV-geek community, because it seems no matter what it does, to some, they just refuse to change their stand point?

So, I’m not the most eloquent person when it comes to jotting down my thoughts, but I hope you get the most of where I am trying to come from. It’s been on my mind to write this for a while so glad to finally get it off the old chest. Is it just a moan? Have you noticed it to? No idea what the problem is? Let me know, I *think* I’m ready to hear your thoughts.

Comments

  1. PaddyDecember 10, 2020 at 12:48 AM

    I think I understand where you're coming from but surely most of this is born out of jealousy? So if your beloved (insert name of regional airport) can never dream of daily flights to Hong Kong then why should Manchester? There is a perception that all regionals should be 'treated' equally by the 'great aviation administrator' and that Manchester getting all the routes is somehow not fair..... so let's write something negative on the interweb so that, hopefully, the great provider of routes will read it and say to themselves "well I never knew that. I shall recall all my aeroplanes immediately".
    As someone who travels the world for a living, I can assure you that I've never met anyone that doesn't know something about Manchester (what's that I hear the detractors saying? 'It's only because of football'... frankly that's only partially true, but so what) Globally recognized as the other British place that's not London, it is really the only other place that is widely mentioned other than that mega-city Ox-Ford frequently mentioned by Americans.
    Manchester is well served because the money is there to be made; when it is not there, routes get pulled - simple as.

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