BasilBush, excellent post if I may say.
In retrospect, MAN made a serious misjudgement about LCCs, believing they would be a short-term phenomenon, and preferred to stick with legacy carriers and charter operators. In the meantime, it saw its nearest competitor 30 miles up the road increase from 0.5m pax a year to over 5 million. The growth of the LCCs also created a change in the types of holiday with more folk doing DIY trips and shorter breaks, rather than the typical 1 or 2 week package holidays to which MAN was heavily committed. I'm sure that was a contributory factor why MAN lost nearly 25% of its passengers when the financial crisis struck.
It may have taken 8 years to almost get back to our record year, but personally I think it's to the credit of the present management that the position has recovered with easyJet and Ryanair now having a bigger base at MAN than at LPL (no disrespect to LPL). This has been achieved while retaining a strong presence by Thomson and Thomas Cook and seeing the development of Jet2.