Long time lurker, first time poster. As you might gather from my username I used to live in Jersey and now live in the North East, so keep tabs on the route fairly closely.
Cautious Optimist
Maybe not as an airport, but look at the North East as a whole. There has been more capacity this year than in years gone by.
EZY, Jet2 and Loganair are operating NCL-JER (previously just EZY), and there is a heavy Jet2 presence on LBA-JER.
Many in Teesside will not be put off by an hour's drive to NCL or LBA and an £80 return fare to JER with EZY/Jet2, rather than a fare north of £300 return with LM from MME.