You have to remember though that the airline in question, although reliable, had relatively high fares. I doubt that such a product would be politically acceptable today when the public sees all the LCC adverts in the UK press.
The trouble is that if an airline gets monopoly/near monopoly then the prices rocket, look what happened last summer to the EM fares to LPL after Emerald stopped flying.
The mystery to me is why Flybe almost completely pulled out, I would have thought that several of the routes would have fitted their business model