You may be right Ozzy. But that depends on the theory that there was a profitable core thin man in a well managed FlyBe 1 if only it could be successfully identified. The alternative proposition is that in an average year, FlyBe had a set of activities all of which would cover variable costs and make a positive contribution, but the sum just didn't add up to coverage of indirect costs.
Suppose you are right that the best bits were the secondary routes ( Soton-Manchester, Leeds-Belfast etc) with a good proportion of business traffic willing to pay full whack for a day return or a next day return. Suppose you can get four decent revenue sectors five days a week out of a plane. That is unlikely to be enough on its own. You have to find something else to make a contribution between 10 and 4. My reading of FlyBe 1 is that, leaving aside the cost side issues, they struggled to identify the profitable core. Perhaps that suggests there wasn't one?