I live in Manchester but work for a firm based on the south coast, so I use the Eastern service usually around 2 or 3 times a month to get there and back for office visits. Despite the very limited timetable and the quite frequent hefty delays, it is still the best way to get from North West England to the south coast. I actually really enjoy flying with Eastern Airways as well, so I was really looking forward to the flights being increased to twice daily from next month. I'd made a number of bookings throughout the summer, and would likely have made a bunch more, so I was pretty gutted when I got the email saying my flights had been cancelled following them suspending the route. The idea of having to go back to the train again is painful.
The timing of this is quite interesting. Although the flights were never full, they did seem to be getting a lot busier. When I first started using the route regularly about 7 or 8 months ago you'd be lucky to get 20 people on board. There must have been around 50 on a return flight 3 weeks ago, and then I took what will probably be my last flight on this route until September this evening, with at least 40 people on board. As has already been mentioned this has always been a popular route for people connecting with cruises, for which we are entering the busiest part of the year. I know Eastern are currently in the process of kicking off new routes to Paris Orly from a handful of UK regional airports... the cynic in me suspected that it may be a case of them focusing on those new routes and diverting resources accordingly.
I'm not hopeful, but I would love it if another operator picked up this route. Flybe did have dates available for the route on their website before the company went bust again, so hopefully Loganair or Blue Islands will see the market for this.