Reply to BA engineering.
We were coming back from Jerez - XRY - now that is a lovely airport - think 70s EDI.
So that gave us a routing via MAD, and daft old fool that I am , I still fondly believe that real airlines (like BA?) might look after you when things go wrong.
Actually Manchester's network feels as though it's getting less and less useful as the place gets more and more LCC - OK for point to point but not for anything more adventurous.