Hi Nikolai and welcome to the south coast.
Bournemouth's runway is more than long enough to cope with the traffic and destinations flown from here (we even got a fully loaded 747 off the ground here more than once with at least 10 foot of spare runway left...) and with the work on-going at the airport there will soon CatIII operational, an apron space for 6 planes at once, a larger and more modern departures and even the often commented on and loved by all arrivals hut will be replaced by something made from bricks!!!
Originally RyanAir were planned to have three based planes at BOH by Easter 2009, but with the global financial meltdown clearly plans change. The new routes announced yesterday shows the airport is still in FR's thoughts and strong rumours are abound that a second plane will be based here by July.
EasyJet is interesting and there have been rumours that they want to base down for at least 5 years. A few years back there was several sightings of men in Orange looking at the old Basco building but nothing came of it and the building became a garage for VP-BAT instead. The route to Geneva does well every winter but the Grenoble route was dropped this year.
The catchment area for BOH is large but because of the large retired population, most of the popular destinations are south to the sunshine or to second homes (just look at PalmAir successfully surviving year on year).
If BOH would function as a business route airport is yet to be tested. With FlyBE up the road at Southampton it would be a brave move to take them on but the introduction of the EDI route for example has already caused a 15% reduction in FlyBE passengers on the same route in its first two months.
All in all, this is both an exciting and dangerous time for BOH. While all the signs are ripe for massive expansion with the terminal work, the world has changed so much economically in the past six months that a cautious approach is fully understandable by the main airlines. BOH will grow and more routes will become available, it will be interesting to see where and when.