Don't blame the airports, blame the airlines
Having just read the Manchester Airport Congestion saga and the lack of resources to service aircraft, let me offer my perspective.
I live in upstate New York. The major airports are LGA, JFK and EWR. It is at a minimum a 2 1/2 hour trip to either airport. This includes a 90 minute train ride, 2 subway connections and then either a bus ride or another train ride. Relatively close by to where I live is White Plains (HPN) and Newburgh (SWF). I can reach either of these places by car in under an hour.
Guess what: To fly from one of the "major metro" airports to Phoenix (2000 miles approximately) is around $400 round trip with 2 weeks notice. To fly from one of the smaller, more convenient airports is in excess of $1000. Any ideas why ?? Let me tell you why.
It is for the airlines benefit. It is far more convenient to fly all the planes into a central hub where parts are available, staff is easily available and the passenger base is readily available not to mention the rescheduling opportunities available with a large number of planes. How can you explain the difference in price when White Plains is only 40 miles from NYC? It is because the airlines don't want people to fly from these regional airports...plain and simple.
Having said that, what's in it for the customer. In my case, nothing but lower fares, congestion and ridiculous flight times. I recently ventured over to Newark for a trip to Washingtion D.C.
Flight time was 28 minutes. The airline scheduled the flight to depart at 5:45pm with an arrival time of 7:15pm for a total of 90 minutes. As the pilot said once we had taxied out, "we're number 50 for take-off and it will be a while". No kidding.
The point here is before anybody starts slagging off airports, they might want to look at the airlines to see what part they play in the overall picture. Don't tell me it would be too hard to fly into either Liverpool or Leeds and take a bus over to Manchester. It's only 60 miles at most.