Although flybe, or British European as it was then, did make a bit of a hash of LBA-LCY, ie. spending all the marketing budget on the name change leaving insufficient funds to promote the service, and then dropping the route just as it became popular; a direct BHD-LCY service was introduced and well marketed. However, the loads were insufficient to sustain the route, and the bean-counters at EXT assessed that the main LCY traffic was from IOM, so the direct service was dropped. I'm sure other operators will have researched this history, and are therefore unlikely to risk it.
I hope bmi Regional do very well on LBA-LCY.