Pinhammond,
I have to disagree very strongly with your observations and conclusions above. What %age out of all routes do Ryanair pull out from - less than 5%, which suggests that they get it right the other 95% of the time.
If you do a statistical analysis of any airline's route network, you will see some very profitable routes at the top (20% of routes generating 80% of profits), a fair chunk in the middle, and then some loss making routes at the bottom. This is a perfectly natural distribution, and it is a credit to Ryanair that they have a policy of getting rid of the duds.
If you've bought a holiday home in Rimini, then you may be unlucky. But Ryanair aren't in the business of running routes for charity. There are numerous other factors which come into play over whether or not a route will be profitable for the airline, which have nothing to do with the "natural" number of passengers who should be using it.
I don't doubt the logic of Easyjet's business model - I think both airlines will be around for some time yet - but right now, which one is more profitable, which one is more reliable, and which one carries more passengers?
If you want to bash Ryanair, there's plenty of things to have a go at them for - but dropping routes, and punctuality (see other thread) - are two issues you really can't touch them on. How many routes have Easy dropped by the way?