Well I appreciated your assessment of MAN's prospects for S2015 Shed with its balanced analysis of the positive and negative aspects of what we know or can deduce. And I enjoy Bagso's contributions. It's disappointing if short, personal and sometimes rather abusive posts are tolerated on here but detailed debate is not.
In terms of my devil's advocate comment that MAN may prefer modest growth, I was thinking more of the next few years as being short term rather than just next summer in the light of significant infrastructure changes that may be planned. That doesn't mean of course that there isn't room for one or two carriers to expand faster in the mix as some airlines are likely to be flat or show low growth while almost inevitably, some - like Monarch - will contract. You are right of course; airlines and airports are highly competitive and I'm sure the last thing MAN would want is for Easyjet or Ryanair to re-establish a stronger presence at say Liverpool because they felt expansion at MAN wasn't being encouraged.
Incidentally, the latest ACL report for MAN for the start of winter shows seats available as 3% higher than at the start of last winter and 4.9% more than at the end of last winter.