I certainly wouldn't begin to advocate replication of the FlyBe 1.0 model. But the notion that every aspect of their business was some kind of basket case incapable of ever achieving profitability is for the birds. There are inter-regional city-pairs which offer opportunity once C-19 restrictions are behind us. But carriers such as Blue Islands, operating five ATR's on an existing network which is right-sized for their business, can only expand to meet the scale of new opportunity by taking on an existential risk in terms of recruiting more staff and significantly expanding their fleet. That would be most unwise in the current climate - I certainly wouldn't recommend it. Likewise Eastern: on Jethro's fleet-size looks like 26 aircraft, though many of these appear to be inactive low-capacity JS41's. Loganair's fleet is larger but is generally kept busy servicing the company's primary role in Scotland along with afew other routes in the portfolio where they make sense. Aurigny is understandably Channel Islands focused. None of these carriers can afford to carry fat ... they don't generally have staff idling about with nothing to do or aircraft sitting around with no established purpose. Yes, several aircraft are grounded by Covid in the medium-term, but even the leanest and best-run businesses couldn't envisage the business environment which has transpired there.
But when covid-think no longer dominates all decisions, route opportunities are there in the regional space. Existing carriers don't have sufficient fleet or staff on their books to take full advantage when the time comes, so there will be space for new entrant carrier(s) or incremental expansion by incumbents. For the latter, cautious expansion would likely be seen as the wisest course: a sudden doubling in fleet size, for example, would be a reckless and existential gamble. But between FlyBe and Stobart, around 90 mid-sized regional aircraft have exited the British Isles market. That is far too many. Emerald is expected to backfill some of these. We can't expect to see 90 aircraft added back in to the market, but it wouldn't be unreasonable to gradually add half of that number. Which is probably beyond the scope of the small number of storm-battered incumbents still standing in the space. So new names will likely be part of the sector's future. Will FlyBe 2.0 be one of these? Who knows ... but I wish them luck in their quest.