This is very true about the breadth of the catchment for holiday flights. Of course, it's exactly the same market forces at play in this market as at Heathrow with New York. MAN has the scale and the frequency which results in cheap fares which in turn attracts price sensitive customers that are prepared to trade convenience for cost. I'm sure the Hull based "bagso" could write passionately about the ridiculousness of having to drive 2 hours west to then fly east to Greece or Cyprus when they have a perfectly good airport in Humberside that can serve this market. Why isn't the government interfering in this appalling state of affairs. Answer: because it's market forces and in an industry with a catalogue of failures and consolidation, wafer thin margins and extreme sensitivity to geo-political events there is little the govt could do to address these issues which doesn't fall into market interference or anti-competitiveness.
I go back it my point of a few days ago which is that this debate is fuelled in the main by departure board snobbery. The ongoing belief that MAN is disadvantaged by the absence of more flights to New York or wherever and all the time ignoring the success that the same principles of market consolidation has brought. It must be obvious that an airport handling 20m passengers is punching well above its weight in attracting people from under the noses of many competing airports, but the fact seems ignored by some because the successes are to holiday destinations in the med. Don't holiday routes to the med need handling, air crew, front of house staff ? Don't they provide income streams to fund investment and pay dividends to the local authorities?
So why are we ready and willing to advocate putting all of this at risk by suggesting the government steps in to review mechanisms to manipulate the market. It's a move that might, possibly, lead to a few more flights to a few more "exotic" destinations but that would almost certainly lead to a reduction in overall throughput, a reduction in revenue and a strengthening of local airports in Yorkshire, Liverpool etc. I think most MAN fans are united in the view that while we want regional airports to succeed, we don't want the neighbours growing at the expense of MAN