I think the problem is that over the years we have been somewhat 'spoilt' at MAN in terms of the variety of routes on offer. When all said and done it is just a regional airport and cannot compete on the same scale as the airports in the south-east. But look at the services we have/have had over the years. The likes of EK double daily, QR, SQ, Malaysian, Ethiad, CX... Not to mention the considerable amount of west bound traffic too. How many other regional airports can boast such a list. Look at the likes of BHX, NCL, GLA. All of these airports have hugh catchment areas and in the case of Birmingham many would argue that this indeed is England's second city yet services and passenger numbers from there have always been years behind those offered from MAN. I guess what I'm trying to say is, is it a case of we are all being far too expectant? Did we really expect services, particularly long-haul, to continue to grow at pace? MAN is not LHR and despite it being in an economically important region, long-haul services were always going to level off at some point. I believe now is that point and because we have been spoilt with so many long-haul offerings in the past, we are now feeling disappointed with this stagnant period. If we all stand back and gain some perspective on the situation, MAN still offers more long-haul routes than any other regional airport in the UK. Surely that's an achievement in itself. We will always play second fiddle to the south-east. The majority of long-haul carriers will find it more viable to operate into LHR and feed pax down from the regions to there. We have to just accept that. When you look at the London bias mentality of our own national carrier, maybe we should all be grateful that we have so many long-haul services in the first place. And finally, the slight drop in pax numbers through MAN has very little to do with long-haul. This is mainly down to the consolidation of charter carriers plus the short-sighted attitude of the big bosses in their failure to attract LCC's. The latter is being addressed. MAN still has 22M pax per annum passing through its terminals, again for a regional airport is this really all that terrible??