Oh come on, that’s tenuous. I would hazard a guess that on most MAN-HUB route most passengers will be connecting. If you believe we would have Singapore at all and a 3x Daily A380 with EK without all those connecting passengers then you need to give your head a shake MAN.
Your made specific reference to the “cross contaminating shuttle”. My question would be, how is LHR a cross contaminating flight but FRA is not? Indeed, from a border perspective, I’d argue that the LHR shuttle is a less contaminating flight (on paper) given it transports folk who have already entered the country.
BA has every right to fly here in the same way that it doesn’t have an obligation to have a hub here. Even as someone who has flown in BA colours whilst based in MAN, I’ve never really understood the hostility towards the airline. Because I think the undercurrent of your comment was indeed hostility towards BA and LHR.
We sometimes forget that we are less than 200 miles away from one of, if not the, worlds city and a City that is always going to be home to the UK’s hub.
I’m proud of MAN. They don’t always get it right but until the covid mess, we did very well. Arguably, we punched above our weight.