Mr Rutan
Your overwhelming full on defence of MAN and the rather snarky reply to a complainant is unjustified.
A few points to make:
1. You mock Mr Atis for electing not to fly domestically. By coincidence I was sat on a FlyBe plane last week (BHD-MAN) and I noticed the 'Faster than Road or Rail' claim. These days it isn't.
Let's say I want to go from home in Manchester to Edinburgh (I used to fly there a lot back in the day).....Taxi to the airport 30 mins in order to arrive 2 hours before the departure time. 1 hour of flying; 30 mins to park the plane, wait for everyone to deplane, walk through the terminal and get in a taxi - 30 mins; taxi in to town 30 mins. That's 4.5 hours. I can drive door to door in 4 hours in the comfort of my own car for probably less than a third of the cost.
Southampton....never go there but I would definitely take the train. That's a no-brainer in order to avoid the airport.
London - train 100% every time.
2.You mention that Mr Atis still flies from MAN because his options are limited. That is true. For me that starts to raise the question of regulation. Regulation exists to stop companies in monopolistic situations abusing that monopoly. Now whilst you can fly on your holidays to Spain from a number of competing airports nearby, there are many many places on the globe where Manchester has a clear monopoly outside of London. I hope the CAA are taking note.
3. You and other defenders of the current situation are always banging on about the current investment program which although it is welcome is at least 10 years too late. The current problems have been obvious for many years and have been getting worse. MAN management have been aware of the deficiencies of their assets for many years and have done nothing whilst raking in the bonuses. Furthermore the current investment program will not fix any of the real problems in T1 (way past it's sell by date and needs a total re-build) and T3 which is badly designed to start with and massively over capacity.
4. I remember well that in the past, one of MAN's selling points was that it wasn't Heathrow which was always (with some justification) painted as some kind of hell on earth and to be avoided at all cost. Now the opposite is true. Why? Because the owners of LHR have invested heavily over a protracted period in order to fix the problems and make it a better place. I never thought this would happen, but it has. Now MAN is to be avoided where possible.
Before you or anyone says I'm somehow 'anti-Manchester' - I'm not - in fact I put in considerable personal effort to lobby and fight for approval for runway 2 back in the day. I'm just so disappointed that such obvious failings of the current and previous management are excused and defended.
I feel that those that defend the current state of affairs are either employed to do so or are plane-spotters (who must think they're in paradise).
It can't be a coincidence that those like me, Mr Atis and others who complain most are those that have to use the airport the most in order to earn a living.