Jabird
I think it would be more accurate to say that baby saw themselves off at MAN rather than anything to do with Jet2 or FR or Easy for that matter, my understanding is that all of baby's airport contracts are handled by bmi legal dept, who as the( left hand) signed a pax volume based deal with MAG based on 5-7 aircraft worth of passengers some years back, meanwhile bmi planning ( right hand) allocated aircraft resources that meant only 2 aircraft were available for MAN, it was much the same with MME planning wanted 6+ aircraft in BHX but legal had signed a contract at MME they thought they could walk away from, hence its my understanding that this long running saga with MME is a group liability not a baby one, again CWL was undermined by the need to put an aircraft into BHD for the STN route at the behest of bmi group planning baby management only wanted to move ops to BHD from BFS, not get involved with night stopping aircraft & crews, although i gather STN is doing well now.
Jabird why do you think CWL is a Northern Airport or is Coventry in Northern France??
I can't see bmibaby being bought by another airline ( other than the IAG deal) but everyone I speak to at baby seems very confident that it will be sold within weeks and either NG's or Airbus will be on the fleet within 12 months, great news for all and the industry if that comes to pass.