The fact still remains that, according to the CAA, the 3 airports in Yorkshire and Humberside handled 4.2m passengers in 2008 and the 3 airports in the North West handled 26.8m. Which is why, even after allowing the usual PPRune talking points of transport, weather, strength of regional economies etc, a number of companies were prepared to invest £140m - £210m in the airport. They all thought the potential to attract local passengers that currently use other airports was big enough in financial terms to warrant the initial outlay and the investment in improving the terminal.
With the owners and management clearly bought into this principle of "big potential" and putting some significant cash on the table to prove it, it is naive to think they would leave themselves reliant and/or exposed to the fortunes of a single carrier. Yes, Jet2 have been the major factor behind the airport's growth in the recent past, but they don't run their business in a way which is designed to attract every last passenger heading across the M62 or down the M1. Nor would anyone expect them to. Increasingly they operate in a way which is very seasonal, sweating the business between May and September and being very conservative outside of this window. It works both ways of course, Jet2 may have started at LBA but they have established 5 other bases since. They too are canny enough to avoid putting all their eggs in one basket.
So once Bridgepoint put the new management team in place, they were always on the look out for new operators. I've no doubt Ryanair were always up there as a prime target for all sorts of reasons, not least because Ryanair have played key roles in driving a second wave at growth at a number of key regional airports. Liverpool, East Mids and Bristol, all got so far with one operator until Ryanair came in. You just don't get 4m - 5m passengers at airports like these with a dominant single operator, especially on the volume bucket and spade routes. It's wise not to ignore either the fact that the same key individual who brought Ryanair to BRS to compete with the well established Easyjet operation a couple of years ago has been instrumental in the Ryanair/LBA agreement. The LBA team aren't exactly entering new ground here.
I've no doubt there will be some interesting cameos along the way, but this isn't something the LBA management team have done in haste, nor is it something someone as long in the tooth as PM would not have been expecting. If the forecasts about the potential for steming passenger leakage is anyway near the mark, there should be plenty of room for both FR and Jet2, as well as others.