A major problem for Scandic last summer was that they had taken on more contracts from Kosmar, MyTravel & Excel than they actually had aircraft for. On top of this, they took on contracts for football & adhoc charters which further added to the chaos that ensued. The airline had two dedicated Viking aircraft at EMA plus a real mixture of 757s which came in from France, Greece, Scotland & Slovakia if I haven't also missed a few out. With sensible timing, I don't doubt that UKJet will be able to utilise the MD-83 far more effectively.
As far as I'm aware regarding the information desk doing boarding calls, this is due to work being done on the airport's PA system. Some of those microphones were falling off of the walls or hanging by a thread. The pessimistic among us think that it's a way for the airport to get info desk staff to do more work, but they already have a huge amount of work to do, so it will impede on their jobs & results in calls being put out incorrectly. Hopefully the new system will be up-and-running shortly.