[Anonymous]

[TimFitzgeraldTC]

Just looking at itinerary of Chinese premier and he is finishing UK tour at Manchester Airport. Perhaps an announcement of a new route to Manchester from Beijing or Shanghai. Or perhaps investment in UK airports.

[BelperFlyer]

Bit of both. Airport city development at MAN is funded by Chinese investment circa £800milion.

Also Hainan have announced

The Hainan route has been unofficially launched!

HU7903 PEK 0145 MAN 0605
HU7904 MAN 1200 PEK 0525+1

Monday/Wednesday/Friday/Saturday with A330.

Starts 10th June.

[Stonemill14]

The route can,since this afternoon, be booked on the Hainan Airlines web site.

[Gin&Tonic]

Ex Man the web is still showing Via Bru which it always has, will be interesting to see the cost and transit times to some of the other Asia destinations will be when they bring the Man-Pek flight on line.

[TimFitzgeraldTC]

The local news link confirming flights

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/business/business-news/manchester-secures-first-ever-direct-10308859

[Stonemill14]

Gin&Tonic
Try putting dates in for next June onwards then making sure direct flights box is ticked – you then get the direct flights ex MAN not via Brussels

[Gin&Tonic]

Stonemill14 thanks I didn’t scroll down far enough, not the best laid out web page, but costs pretty high compared to a lot of other options.

[Stonemill14]

GIN&TONIC
Did you notice that the site prices fares in Euro not £?

[PeterCoultas]

With all this new chinese investment & partnership could Cameron please get them to build HS2, HS3 plus a “northern powerhouse” route?

Then we could see them before the next century.

PS it is in chinese interest as the UK is to become their offshore european banking centre, rather like Hong Kong was our far eastern one in days of glorious empire.

[AMcWhirter]

Route expected to be officially launched tomorrow.

http://www.businesstraveller.com/news/102179/hainan-airlines-to-fly-nonstop-to-manchester

[canucklad]

My cynicism is similar to yours Peter,

“Great news for Manchester …… The Northern Powerhouse “

Ahh-ehmmmm !!

I’m just back from Manchester, and I’m slightly bemused, with this now constant reference to it being a Powerhouse. Can’t think of what the Chinese will invest in…….

A 5* airline flying to a city that has more homeless people on the streets, than any other city I’ve yet to visit in the UK and Ireland.

Although I suppose, like China, and London the Northern Powerhouse does has streets paved with gold. Sadly for the majority of us, we will never lace our boots and run onto the park to play for the City United !!

Or maybe the new route is to make it easier for the fans of the 2 clubs to watch their boyhood hero’s…..

[Stonemill14]

Canucklad & Peter

I am afraid that I disagree with you on most points in your posts – and not because I now live in Manchester. In the last few years, I have flown out of Beijing, Shanghai & Chengdu back to the UK several times each year. I could guarantee that on every occasion on the following sector I was seated next to a passenger who had come off one of those flights – I suspect around 30% of the passengers on flights from China were not terminating their journey at LHR, but connecting on elsewhere. That figure could easily be double at the start & end of the academic terms. The market is there – in less than a year since CX launched flights into MAN, they have frequently achieved a load factor of 90%+ on their flights into MAN and at certain times it is impossible to get a seat in Y or C on that flight.

The UK has just reduced the visa cost for PRC tourists by 60%+ to £85 and begun to issued two year multiple entry visas with a common UK / Schengen application form, so in-bound tourism is bound to increase. In addition, a Chinese developer is currently developing a hotel in the city solely to cater for Chinese tourists. CX are looking to make their flights into MAN daily from early next year to cope with current demand, and I suspect that Hainan might very well be looking to do the same by late 2017.

On the point of the homeless in Manchester, I was recently in Hamburg and Frankfurt where I saw far more homeless people but as there is a stigma attached to this in Germany, it is often not as visible. In the former city, there were numerous tented encampments under railway bridges and in the parks, and people begging on the main shopping streets.

Manchester’s problem is about 30 or so “supposed” homeless individuals from the city and elsewhere in the UK who make themselves “visible” as a form of protest. Every single individual you see on the streets has been offered accommodation by the city council, but has refused to take this up for one reason or another. By the way, have you ever been to Tokyo and seen the vast cardboard cities that appear at dusk?

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