I was in MAN waiting for the ORK flight (on time, as was SNN) when that flight was delayed.
I can understand that it might be annoying, but the same thing happens on EI mainline. I have memories of booking the 9:30pm flight from Heathrow to Dublin rather than the 10:15pm one because public transport to my apartment would still be running when that one landed. Of course, the 9:30pm flight left at 11pm and the 10:15pm left at 10:15pm.
What I would say is that I'm not sure about mixing the provider on the same route. When there are different hand baggage limits and the like, it potentially creates all sorts of problems, such as when someone finds that the limit for coming back is lower than for going out. The value of customer relations are a lot harder to quantify than operational efficiency.