Done a bit of self investigation today, comparing the amount of preflight seat booking between NOC and EDI, and LDY and MAN. Services from NOC had between 4-6 seats more booked per flight. Do you think this means it's more successful or travellers from LDY and MAN are just more cost saving savvy. In all honesty, I wouldn't spend cira £6 each way just to reserve a seat. I know I can still get a window seat and as long as I'm not right beside the propellor, I'm happy.
I think the seat reserving thing is really only useful to certain passengers - families with children, those caring for elderly or sick people etc, it would be important for them to reserve their seats because when I was checking in at the flybe self service kiosk during the week there were no pairs of seats available together on my flight. A passenger behind me on board asked to move to sit with her friend further up the plane but was told that she couldn't because of weight balance issues. If you're a single traveller you're probably not going to care enough to spend the money to choose.
I would expect the NOC-EDI flight to sell a little better because there is no competition into Knock from Scotland (or anywhere north of Leeds). MAN-LDY will be in competition with the LPL flight which will probably affect numbers somewhat.
I saw on another forum where a poster reported being the only fare paying passenger on an ATR 72 from Derry to Dublin this weekend. Only three came off the inbound flight to Derry. I guess the loss of the PSO routes is unlikely to have much effect on the passenger numbers of the airports involved.