Oh come on SHED, can we not be happy for the positives? The route development people at MAN have done a wonderful job lately and deserve a bit of praise. It must be soul destroying to work so hard to get new services in, during difficult times and then read such negative comments on a forum like this.
I expect you might be partially right but reading your comments is wrist slitting stuff. Manchester is doing relatively well in hard times so let's just be grateful for that. It could be a lot lot worse - reading about some of the other airports on this forum.
On another note I have now sampled the brand new Lufthansa (re BMI) business class service between MAN and FRA which despite the gloom (sorry) was actually full in Business and I think more or less full at the back too although I couldn't see properly. Credit where credit's due, the CC did a good job and were almost as good as the LH people (I think the only difference is cultural - where good manners and courtesy are engrained in the German psyche, it's bit more forced when Brits try it). But it was fine really.
Noticeable difference though is the typical lazy announcements of the FC = '(yawning...) starting our descent over London, then up over Birmingham and landing on the South Westerly runway at Manchester''
Inbound flights don't route over Birmingham (some outbounds do) but over Leicester and Derby (I'd say more or less up the route of the M1 from visuals)....how do I know this? Well, many a Lufthansa and Swiss pilot has accurately pointed this out unlike their British counterparts who should know better. Sloppiness and inaccuracy are not attributes I'm comfortable with in a pilot tbh.