Hi Will,

I am flying from Manchester to Heathrow in September for the Texas/New Orleans holiday. I have been informed that, although BA and AA are in the same alliance I will still have to reclaim my luggage at Heathrow and re-book myself in, which, of course means alot more hassle! Can you explain why this is please?

Regards, Pat

Hi Pat,

I've just bee looking into this with our Aviation department for you.

There are two ways of booking connecting flights - either as an add-on to your transatlantic flight or as a standalone flight.

We always try and book connecting flights as an add-on as that would mean your bags would be checked through. However, we are not always able to get those.

But instead we have still managed to get a flight for you, but it is a standalone booking and therefore it means you will have to collect your luggage I'm afraid.

I hope that clears it up a little for you. I'm sure you will find the connection at Heathrow to be pretty easy - they have made connecting so much better in recent times.

Thanks

Will

Dear all,

as a result of your great feedback we are going to be trialling some Manchester specific departures for our 2013 holidays. These will be available in our September brochure. Although there will be just a small selection initially while we try and guage what works we hope that this will improve your choices if you live in the north.

We will also improve the way that we show our regional departure options on the brochure page so that it makes it easier for you to see which holidays will be best for your needs.

Thanks again to everyone for taking the time to tell us your thoughts.

happy holidays

Will

Hi Will,

I have followed this thread with interest. I see Just You are considering offering more flights from Manchester for next year to cater for those people living in the North, which is great - but what about us Midlanders?

Whereas East Midlands airport would probably not be an option, Birmingham has a very large airport and I am sure there must be flights available to the destinations Just You use.

At present we get very little choice of holidays from Birmingham, other than a few long-haul holidays, so for the majority of holidays we have to fly from London airports - but we get no connecting flights from Birmingham to London either.

It will be interesting to see what holidays are offered from Manchester in the new brochure, but even so it will just mean we Midlanders still have very few options from Birmingham.

Best wishes,

Lesley :angel:

Hi Will

I too have followed this tread with great interest and would fully endorse all of Lesley's comments re flights from Birmingham airport. I do struggle to understand why there is no connecting flight from Birmingham (England's 'second city') to London. Can you offer any reasons for why that is? While it's very nice to consider offering more flights from Manchester (about 90mins from me), please please remember the heart of England!

Best Wishes

Mike

I think Manchester is a good option for many and I hope Just You will progressively increase the choice of holidays from there. They cannot be expected to cater for every region of the UK and I don't think it unreasonable to expect people to travel up from the Midlands. Manchester is not near to the East Coast of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, the North East or Scotland, but is still infinitely preferable to travelling to Gatwick or Heathrow. Apart from the inconvenience of travelling time, it will cut the expensive of travel and hotel rooms, making holidaying with Just You a viable option for many more travellers outside the South of England. I hope European holidays will be available, and not just long haul.

I am flying from Manchester to Heathrow in September for the Texas/New Orleans holiday. I have been informed that, although BA and AA are in the same alliance I will still have to reclaim my luggage at Heathrow and re-book myself in, which, of course means alot more hassle! Can you explain why this is please?

Regards, Pat

Dear all,

as a result of your great feedback we are going to be trialling some Manchester specific departures for our 2013 holidays. These will be available in our September brochure. Although there will be just a small selection initially while we try and guage what works we hope that this will improve your choices if you live in the north.

We will also improve the way that we show our regional departure options on the brochure page so that it makes it easier for you to see which holidays will be best for your needs.

Thanks again to everyone for taking the time to tell us your thoughts.

happy holidays

Will

Hi Will,

I have followed this thread with interest. I see Just You are considering offering more flights from Manchester for next year to cater for those people living in the North, which is great - but what about us Midlanders?

Whereas East Midlands airport would probably not be an option, Birmingham has a very large airport and I am sure there must be flights available to the destinations Just You use.

At present we get very little choice of holidays from Birmingham, other than a few long-haul holidays, so for the majority of holidays we have to fly from London airports - but we get no connecting flights from Birmingham to London either.

It will be interesting to see what holidays are offered from Manchester in the new brochure, but even so it will just mean we Midlanders still have very few options from Birmingham.

Best wishes,

Lesley :angel:

Hi Will

I too have followed this tread with great interest and would fully endorse all of Lesley's comments re flights from Birmingham airport. I do struggle to understand why there is no connecting flight from Birmingham (England's 'second city') to London. Can you offer any reasons for why that is? While it's very nice to consider offering more flights from Manchester (about 90mins from me), please please remember the heart of England!

Best Wishes

Mike

Hi Mike,

to my knowledge there are no airlines that fly from Birmingham to Heathrow or Gatwick at all

Dear all,

as a result of your great feedback we are going to be trialling some Manchester specific departures for our 2013 holidays. These will be available in our September brochure. Although there will be just a small selection initially while we try and guage what works we hope that this will improve your choices if you live in the north.

We will also improve the way that we show our regional departure options on the brochure page so that it makes it easier for you to see which holidays will be best for your needs.

Thanks again to everyone for taking the time to tell us your thoughts.

happy holidays

Will

Hi Will,

I have followed this thread with interest. I see Just You are considering offering more flights from Manchester for next year to cater for those people living in the North, which is great - but what about us Midlanders?

Whereas East Midlands airport would probably not be an option, Birmingham has a very large airport and I am sure there must be flights available to the destinations Just You use.

At present we get very little choice of holidays from Birmingham, other than a few long-haul holidays, so for the majority of holidays we have to fly from London airports - but we get no connecting flights from Birmingham to London either.

It will be interesting to see what holidays are offered from Manchester in the new brochure, but even so it will just mean we Midlanders still have very few options from Birmingham.

Best wishes,

Lesley :angel:

Hi Will

I too have followed this tread with great interest and would fully endorse all of Lesley's comments re flights from Birmingham airport. I do struggle to understand why there is no connecting flight from Birmingham (England's 'second city') to London. Can you offer any reasons for why that is? While it's very nice to consider offering more flights from Manchester (about 90mins from me), please please remember the heart of England!

Best Wishes

Mike

Dear all,

as a result of your great feedback we are going to be trialling some Manchester specific departures for our 2013 holidays. These will be available in our September brochure. Although there will be just a small selection initially while we try and guage what works we hope that this will improve your choices if you live in the north.

We will also improve the way that we show our regional departure options on the brochure page so that it makes it easier for you to see which holidays will be best for your needs.

Thanks again to everyone for taking the time to tell us your thoughts.

happy holidays

Will

Thanks Will. Nice to know we are listened to!

I look forward to the September brochure offering flights directly from manchester I will definitely be itnterested in this as I love travelling with Just You and it mayu broaden my choice now.

thank you

JeanL

Hi Will

Could you please tell us which holidays will be featured?

Kind regards

Di

Hi everyone,

I have travelled with Just You on many occasions now and would much prefer departures from Manchester as having to change at Heathrow adds the the journey time considerably. When I went to China via Heathrow the journey was much too long and would not do this again.

I now pick holidays only flying from Manchester and would take more long haul if flights were available. I could travel to London the day before but this would use up more holiday leave. If I had to change I would prefer to change in London. I really wanted to do the trip to Carcassonne but I would have to change at Heathrow and for such a short journey this was impractical.

I wanted to say thank you for sharing all of your thoughts regarding flights from non-London airports. Hopefully I can explain a little why we do not have a large selection of regional options on each tour and I also would like to get your thoughts on some of the things that we can do to help.

When we saw the thread a couple of weeks back we sat down with our Aviation team and set about going through all of our best selling tours in the hope that we could easily add in some extra regional options for you. However, it was not quite as straightforward as we had hoped.

Although airports such as Newcastle, Manchester, Glasgow and Bristol do offer a great number of destinations, actually marrying those up with our tours is a much harder task. Days of operation, flight timings and having different start and end airports are all major factors. Some regional carriers, like Ryanair, will not even permit us to use their flights at all unfortunately.

We are also committed to delivering you the best possible Just You experience and so we are very mindful of having just a couple of people going from a regional airport where there is no Tour Manager and they do not get to meet with the group until they are in resort. We know from the feedback that we have received that many guests would much rather all be together. Although I am sure there are some seasoned travellers who would not see this as an issue. Would you still be inclined to book if you knew that the Tour Manager would not be travelling with you?

In terms of Long Haul holidays, there are sometimes flights from regional airports, especially Manchester, but very rarely will they be direct and so there may be long connection times and there is also the experience of having to change planes in a strange country when there is no Tour Manager around to assist - again, we want to make sure that our guests are getting the best possible Just You experience.

We do listen to your feedback though and we want to try and give you the holidays that you want. One of the ideas that we came up with was offering dedicated departures from a certain alternative airport, such as Manchester, on a set date or dates each year for tours with the appropriate routes available. Obviously this would mean that there would be less choice of dates but you would all still be travelling as one group with a Tour Manager. Would that be the sort of thing that would be better for us to look into for you?

Another question we would be very interested to know your thoughts on - where no direct regional flights are available, would you rather change planes in London or abroad?

We would love to hear from you so that we can offer the holidays that you want!

Thanks a lot

Will

You have listened and Manchester is a very good start. I shall certainly be interested. It's better for people from the North East, Scotland and Midlands as well as the North West.

Regards, Pat