Bagso - I was struggling to find any evidence from the oral or written evidence given by airlines that suggested they would be beating down the door at MAN if bilaterals were abolished. There's a lot to get through however, so please do send me the dates or specific links and I'm happy to be corrected. I did see the evidence from the MAN team and also saw this was contradicted by the CAA, BA and Virgin to various degrees. All parties will be pushing their agendas of course, MAN being no exception.
I also note the lack of corroborating noise in the airline business itself. You do feel this with APD. You do feel this with Heathrow capacity. You do feel the vibes around the pressures due to oil, competition from the Middle Eastern carriers and other "industry issues". MAN and bilaterals is not a hot topic, however much you might wish it to be the case. Logically that suggests the people in charge of deploying scarce capital in the business, think they can make that capital work harder for them at places other than regional UK. If they thought otherwise and barriers were in place, you'd never hear the last of it.