you pay peanuts for air travel but expect the infrastructure to be operating like a private yacht with unlimited funds!
Remember all that about showcasing MAN as a key part of UK PLC? All those (genuine) complaints about why don’t BA serve long haul from MAN? Because MAN is touted as gateway to the North as well as Scotland, so if that’s true, then the *basics* need to be there and they are not.
Penny pinching on the little things kills the customer experience and in a competitive market that’s important. T3 is still a write off, a Hell to be endured, and while I get huge progress is underway, someone keeps dropping balls on the day-to-day.
BTW if LGW with a similar volume of night stoppers and traffic profile can get by on one runway, so could MAN, with a will. R2 was an remains such a sub-optimal layout depending on wind direction and SID.