But let's be honest here - your previous posts have resonated with an almost religious zeal about how many passengers pass through MAN and its position in an entirely meaningless "league table" of UK airports. Are you really able to provide an objective and impartial assessment of airport developments in the last 10 years that have served to stunt the growth of MAN? I rather think not. I think what to you is "madness" or "dreamland" is probably viewed elsewhere as a massive success in introducing genuine competition and consumer choice into air travel in Northern England. Why would the typical man in the street, be he living in Manchester, Liverpool or Sheffeld want air travel choices to be at the whim of a monopoly provider.
Knowing some of the detail background of R2, I think the inconvenient truth here is that is that MAN's managers and shareholders in the 90s convinced themselves of a "no one will want to fly from anywhere else" story. In hindsight, maybe that's where the real madness was.