United Airlines Manchester

United Airlines at Manchester. The curious case of a disappearing airline.

It’s far to say, Covid has wreaked havoc on the aviation industry. Prolonged border closures, public perceptions of the virus and job losses across the globe has put a huge strain on an industry which was booming in 2019.

Manchester has been no exception to losing flights. BA cityflyer has pulled their weekend operation, Westjet has postponed its Halifax launch for the foreseeable and Oman Air have suspended their Muscat route indefinitely too.

There was one airline however, where their pull out puzzled me a little more than the others, and that was United Airlines. United have been serving Manchester for bee 20, although the majority of those years were flying under the Continental banner, in the days before the United/Continental merger. In that time, the flight used the DC-10, the B757, B777-200 (including the brilliant Peter Max livery) as well as 3 variants of the B767 (-200, -300 And -400).

2019 was when the route really began to boom again. Even in the face of competition at JFK from Virgin and Thomas Cook, United switched from the B757 to a B767-300. Then, towards the end of 2019, it was announced that the route was going to increase again to the B767-400, which represented a bigger increase in premium seats over economy seats.

Then covid hit.

In February, when covid was really starting to raise its ugly head, a lot of Airlines around the world made the decision to have a brief break in service, as it was thought covid wouldn’t be quite as prolonged as it ended up being. But, United at Manchester did something a bit different, and slightly more brutal. They cut Manchester completely.

Now, like I say, at the time, it wasn’t envisaged that covid would be quite the disruptive force it was, so I, and many others, were quite taken aback at such a brutal response. How could a route that was increasing season on season, gaining more premium seats, even public talk from their U.K. boss of a second route, suddenly just be cast aside, while other seasonal, leisure heavy routes remain? People widely regard Manchester as leisure heavy, so, why wasn’t seasonal tried? Why wasn’t a smaller aircraft tried? Why wasn’t a lower frequency tried?

The brutality of the cut leads me to think that Manchester-Newark wasn’t quite as leisure driven as some think. The fact that more premium seats were to be added just before covid hit, leads me to think their route enjoyed some form of corporate contract, and with the pandemic looming, home working soon to be the norm, and job losses across several sectors, this company suddenly pulled that contract. If it wasn’t a corporate contract and Leisure really drove this route, then why wasn’t a less frequent, less premium heavy aircraft trailed instead of a total pull out.

With leisure and and VFR now being cast to the front and centre of airline planning, and increased competition from the pending Aer Lingus base, and if the corporate contract did exist and comes back as business rebounds, could United come back? There are rumours of a return, with their social media channels and other sources stating a June resumption, so, there is hope. One would hope they will return, they were a Manchester stalwart for over 2 decades and would be very welcome back on the ramp at Manchester. They clearly made the route work for that long, hopefully they can find that receipt to make it work again.

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