Down here in the southwest this was all forseen (except of course by the regional development agency).
How b****dy stupid can you be. You have a regional airport operating on a knife edge financially with one major commercial operator. You then say, 'I know that the current operator has kept us afloat for donkey's years, but let's subsidise a rival operator, (foreign operator I might add), by allowing him free/susidised access. This will give us more airport through traffic and hopefully bring more people to the area".
Oops! now we've upset the current operator who has seen profits drop and they have now pulled out. Still, at least we have the new one. Oh s**t! but we don't charge him anything to land so the airport is now financially in trouble.
Never mind there will be another operator coming along to operate that route. Ah! but will they want to pay any more than the one we have subsidised? .....I'll give you one guess!
Having seen the latest press coverage of this issue, I found it incredulous that when the airfield operators cried poverty and losses, not one of the reporters asked why. Just what sort of business school did these guys attend?
Ah! I feel better to get that off my chest.