There's been some fantastic opinion here in the last 24hrs. No wonder this thread is coming up to nearly a million visits.
I totally agree with davidjohnson6 about the company acting as its own customer not being best practice, although oddly if Stobart were the only ones flying from SEN then it could be argued it was part of one core activity.
However, it is what it is. They had to do something. If they make a reasonable fist of things and they still are able to offer 15 routes in 2018 then I can see the airport moving forward and drawing in new business.