I have been a long term watcher of this topic and feel it important to make this small point. I travel to Spain frequently as I have business interests there. I live about 8 miles form Newcastle Airport and about 40 miles form DTVA. Several posters make reference to historic passenger numbers at DTVA which did rise to around 900k pa and they give the impression that all who use the airport live very close to the airport. Thats not the case at all - the 900k pa did not come from Cleveland / County Durham alone. I passed through DTVA regularly from 2005 onwards driven by one factor alone - ticket price. BMI Baby were very competetive , regularly beating Easyjet & Thomson fly at Newcastle on the cost of a return to Malaga. Flights were full and the service was reliable. For whatever reason the airport and the airline seemed to go in opposite ditrections .Flyglobespan , the "replacement" however were expensive in comparative terms , less reliable and less regular. At the same time Jet 2 came along to Newcastle and gave us "Northeners" more choice and more competetive pricing. The point I am making is clear . I love DTVA and am prepared to travel there to fly ...if the ticket price is right. Unfortunately you have neither the servive nor the ticket price to make me come back - and I am not alone in coming down from Tyneside.Many of your 900k pa did. Sadly the traffic is working the other way as I saw several Teesside locals checking in at NCL last week off on their hols. We are in tough economic times and in the past 6 months I have used / flown from Robin Hood , Liverpool , Manchester and Birmingham to Spain due to ticket cost. MY conclusion is that the only airline ,(Its my opinion), who could make any inroads in the present climate at DTVA is Ryanair who without any competition could claw back those numbers and improve things.
Good luck.