The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
‘Man-Fran’ part of a new trend in transatlantic travel from Manchester
Manchester is staking a claim as a cost-effective alternative to London for British holidaymakers keen to fly to the United States. city’s airport this week welcomed the start of two new Virgin Atlantic routes to the US. San Francisco direct launched on Tuesday, linking the two cities for the first time, and Boston direct began the following day. A new route to New York JFK will start in May, while Thomas Cook will begin direct flights to San Francisco from the airport in the same month.
Manchester Airport now links the North with 13 US destinations.
Virgin is offering 26 per cent more seats out of Manchester this year than it did last year. The airline says its direct Manchester-San Francisco route will save 100,000 passengers within the airport’s catchment area, now flying indirect to the West Coast city, hours in journey time. It says Man-Fran is poised to become as iconic as NY-Lon, the nickname for the historic New York-to-London route launched by Pan Am in 1947.
Tuesday’s inaugural flight was filled with representatives from tech companies from northern England, a nod to the potential business links with Silicon Valley.
“We’ve been flying out of Manchester for over 20 years and today marks our biggest route expansion from the city,” Virgin Atlantic’s chief commercial officer, Shai Weiss, said.
Virgin’s four-times-a-week service will take 11 hours and 20 minutes and have a lead-in price of £589 one-way, the same price as Heathrow’s daily flights.
However, a check by Telegraph Travel of fares to San Francisco with Virgin Atlantic from both London and Manchester found that travellers could save hundreds of pounds using the latter.
Departing June 30 and returning July 14 costs £1,299. on the airline’s London Heathrow service but £768 using Manchester. Thomas Cook flights a day earlier outbound and in cost from £540 return. Return trains from London to Manchester Airport can cost as little as £55 and require one change at Crewe.
The airport is hailing the ManFran route as a watershed moment in connecting the North of England to America’s western seaboard. Representatives suggest that the two cities share a kindred spirit, with both home to a thriving music scene, food culture and arty neighbourhoods. Mancunians already know San Francisco as the “American Manchester”, according to Virgin Atlantic. And where Manchester welcomes frequent rain, San Francisco is known for its fog.
“San Francisco is one of America’s great walking cities,” said Telegraph Travel’s expert Sara Benson. “With a good pair of shoes and a Muni ticket, you can see almost everything in the city.”
Thomas Cook, too, sees Man-Fran as an important step in the growth of its network. “It has never been so easy for our customers to reach top US destinations,” said chief airlines officer Christoph Debus. “With seven direct US routes from Manchester, five of which we have launched in the past three years, we’re making good progress with our strategy to grow our long-haul network.”
Manchester Airport is the third busiest in the UK behind Heathrow and Gatwick, with 25.6 million passengers last year, 11 per cent up on the 2015 figure. Heathrow had just one per cent growth in the same period, while Gatwick experienced 7.1 per cent.