Gentlemen,
If you look at Newcastle you will see that only 11% of all passengers use ANY form of public transport to get to the airport, that is a complete red herring.
You also need to look more closely at industrial Teesside. Unemployment has been soaring and industrial plants have been CLOSED and mothballed across the region. This dream that the economy is ready to soar and bring prosperity quickly is tosh.
The lack of connection to the capital means that a lot of onward connections are lost as well as the daily commute to the smoke, it does have a knock on.
Teesside has always been the poor relation to the other neighbouring airports and frankly always will. Apart from a few who will doubtless take a great deal of delight in correting me, Teesside itself is a dump. Sorry to break it to you but people go elsewhere for weekend city breaks, cultural outlets and to take their onward connections for inward tourism. I know there are a lot of great places within easy travel but it cannot compete on any basis with any of the other closeby airports.
Ryanair et al are not the panacea as they bring their own set of problems and if you actually look at RYR's route selection policy its usually a very short term gain before much chopping and changing at everywhere other than their major mega bases.
Someone mentioned earlier about the military and Germany; not sure if you've noticed but we have very little military presence in Germany now compared to years ago and if a loco can't make NCL to Germany work it seems unlikely that MME will do.
The organisation and management appear a shambles but reallistically what does anyone expect them to pull off given the economy, the infrastructure and the relative wealth of their local clientele?