Meant to post this earlier but all travel plans went fine; left an hour early and ran for the 3.40 train. Plenty of seats which was hard to understand as Euston was very crowded and every second manchester train was cancelled. Could have been lucky as Euston was the feature item on BBC news that night as an example of how bad the trains were. Virgin trains quite nice - Northern rail to manchester airport from Crewe less so. Airport functions quite well I imagine? Much less hassle than Heathrow and Gatwick (T5 aside), and the security process is technologically and common sense wise much better.