Six of one...
I am based in Manchester and travel with one of the three alliances on a weekly basis at least. I am writing this because as I got T5'ed last night after several incident free (but at times comedy) trips through BAA's new greenhouse. I got stuck in an automated check-in nightmare and missed the last flight. It was a pain but BA put me on a BMI alternative without any drama. I was in Paris recently and my flight went tech. Air France found another plane and we got in 90 minutes late - a great performance.
I have a list of delays, cancellations and nightmares (Moscow once took 24 hours with KLM via AMS and CDG) for all the carriers. My conclusion - living in a region sucks and this will get worse as MAN goes loco.