On the flights I took, it all seemed very overstaffed, perhaps like they were using Southend staffing levels for each flight? Clearly, I'm an armchair CEO here, but surely one person on check-in who then handles gate duties, someone handling security, a loader and a dispatcher, were all that were needed for 3 x SAAB flights a day at most?
I still believe a daily KLM flight to AMS would work (yeah, I know AMS has plenty of issues at the moment, but if INV works, CAX would too).