and I can tell you now, despite serving ORD for 28 years and now JFK, AA would have given up on MAN 4 years ago if it not were for BA, so it does have some credit.
Ohh come on, you need to back that one up.
I do disagree with the use of the word "affection", it's pure business. BA won't look seriously at MAN again for a while in my view, simply because many of the people who made the decision to leave are still there. They remember how hard it is for
British Airways and it's unique organisation and way of doing things to succeed in that kind of venture. It's plain wrong to say they couldn't be bothered when history shows they operated a whole network from MAN for my whole life until the recent closure. I am not imagining the noise those BAC111s made, however it was always supported by traffic interlining from Scotland, something that was later pushed via LHR for good commercial reasons and also went direct with the coming of the locos. Remember MAN/BHX got all the directs where us Scots had to connect, sound familiar? GLA had one single non stop GLA-Europe (CDG) that I can recall. The support mechanism for that hub, the Scottish feed is lost to direct traffic so you'd be looking at a point to point into Europe against a point to hub (KLM/ AF / LX / LH / TP) competition or a loco with costs BA can only dream of.
The reason BAC111s flew against new B737s and A320s for so long was BA saw no return in investment at BHX/MAN and the operation died a slow death by a thousand cuts.
Do you lot really think this is anything but good business? There's no way for BA to win at MAN. No feed at either end, EZY with a lower cost base, the Euro legacies with a feed at the other end. What's the solution guys? The B767s are not a "bit past it", they're unreliable heaps that customers hate flying on and there's no business case for the B787-8 out of MAN unless and AA decide to switch MAN to BA when the B763s finally retire.