Again, I understand the IB tie in, but rather than give MAN a chance, expansion is going mile and miles south of the UK. Its BRITISH airways, not LHR-MAD airways!
Now, Id rather see BA set up a small hub at MAN, displacing some high frequency routes to MAN, for example LHR-NYC where AA has 5 or 6, and LHR has 9 (EWR/JFK).
There's sadly no room for sentiment as one bad summer can kill an airline and the dole queue is a rather long one. A large amount of BA's profits come from a small number of select routes, the LHR-JFK being one of them, so sharing the resources with MAN doesn't work in the same way. 10 LHR-JFK flights will make more money than an 8+2 split, indeed they are heading to a half hourly evening shuttle out of JFK shared with AA. I think it's all about the connections, and with room to grow at MAD, they can have a business model with critical mass and some logic to it. i.e. US from London, South America from Madrid, bith hubs with large feeds, lounges, engineering staff and the whole shebang.
Great to hear SQ isn't giving up!