Manchester has always been my local airport, I lived in Stockport all my life, I worked at the airport for 19 years for the airline that FlyBe took over. I then had a slight career change and moved to Nottingham.
My new venture sees me flying to destinations all around the world and living in Nottingham I have a big choice, European destinations can be found from EMA, STN, LTN, BHX, LBA, and MAN, I have used them all. I do many a long haul too and have used BHX, MAN and LHR on a regular basis.
After 2 years of using all of the above I will not use MAN again. Everything that has been said in previous posts is true. Queue's are everywhere you look whether outbound or inbound, baggage, security, passport control all take an age, (in my opinion BHX is just as bad).
For all my recent flights I have driven to LHR, easy to get to, easy to park, easy to get through security and easy to retrieve your luggage on return, oh yes and security staff actually smile!.
Unfortunatly all the ad campaigns in the world won't get me back to MAN.