I have just read this thread from start to finish and it has just made me realise how much Manchester Airport has pervaded my life!
I am typing this sat in an hotel at Luxembourg airport in between flights as my job as a loadmaster, a direct result of my hobby as a spotter
Call me sad! but I remember the actual day I started spotting; 8th of August 1976 and I also remember "making" 68 aircraft and that was without decent binoculars to read of the stuff on the south side.
My first meeting with the airport was back in 1973 when my mum, dad and I emigrated to Zambia so it was a flight on a British Airways 1-11 down to Heathrow. It was the ensuing to-ing and fro-ing between Zambia and schooling back here that ignited my interest in aircraft and spotting. I remember the arduous journey by bus, the 211 from Hyde to Manchester then the 44 onwards to the airport. On Sundays I seem to remember catching the 400 in Denton I think it was, direct to the airport.
When I left school it was my intention to join the RAF but being rather unable to accept discipline
I never pursued that avenue but some years later I found myself working from the freight centre at the airport for Captain Cargo!!
I then branched out on my own and ran a small delivery company again based at the airport. I went on to employ drivers and spent even more time at the airport spotting at the brickworks and then on to the newly opened AVP. It was from my almost daily visits to the viewing park that I met a certain gentleman that worked for an airline and who was also a spotter that I ended up first working in operations then becoming a loadmaster and all because of Manchester airport!!
I still live 8.5 miles out from 23R and whenever I am home I am still to be found with my head stuck out of my loft window or down at the airport (not as much now as the AVP has lost it's original lustre, but that's another long saga).
We all know now that Manchester airport, indeed any airport, is a different animal to what it used to be in days gone by. Completely impersonal and sterile, not the friendly welcoming place it used to be but I still feel very close to the place.
Sorry if I have waffled somewhat