Nobody takes a flight from London to Manchester. So why would we take HS2?

From Edinburgh airport there are more than 45 flights a day to London. And, I imagine, the same number back. You can fly from Edinburgh to London Heathrow, -London Gatwick, London Luton, -London Stansted and London City — even to the optimistically named -London Southend. Glasgow offers a similar choice.

I have often used these flights. I live about 25 minutes’ drive from Gatwick, so when I go to Edinburgh my -favourite plan is to take a morning train up and then fly or take the sleeper back.

Since Manchester is bigger than Edinburgh, I had naively assumed that I would be able to do something similar for an upcoming trip there.

I decided to fly from Gatwick and take the train back. ‘You can’t. There aren’t any flights from Gatwick to Manchester any more.’ OK — London City, then? ‘Nope.’ Apparently there aren’t any of those either. Nor from Luton, Stansted or Southend. Ten flights a day from Heathrow and that’s it. And the Heathrow flights are as much for transfer passengers as for people travelling point to point.

I think it says something about the priorities of the UK’s financial sector that you can take flights from London City airport to Jersey, Zurich (and Liechtenstein), Bern, Basel, Geneva, Nice (i.e. Monaco, a ‘sunny place for shady people’) and the Isle of Man (a rainy place for shady people). But not to Britain’s third city.

It says something too about the priorities of Mancunians that you can fly direct from Manchester airport to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Las Vegas and Barbados but not to Luton, Gatwick, Stansted, London City or Southend.

And all this also says something about how much importance people attach to getting between Manchester and London half an hour quicker. Not much.