skyman771 - sorry I was not intending to be pedantic as you put it but where are you getting your info from, Ive been an airline analyst for sometime now and the NSO only produce statistics on income and disposable income on those in employment and I am not aware that any organisation holds information on income/disposable income for any other group. Therefore this is the only accurate information that would be used when an airline looks at new routes, Waitrose a new store, Mcdonalds a new restaurant etc, etc.
Also with regard to your comment on backing the wrong horse I am not sure if its a case of backing the wrong horse or simply a case of it becoming a one horse race! Ryanair did a huge amount of work three years ago with regard to a NCL base however the main aspect of this research was that the 738 they operate is to large for the potential new routes they would want from a NCL base. NCL will therefore only pick up the odd routes from Ryanair.
As for easyjet, in my opinion and I hope I am wrong, but I think they will be off when the 10 year agreement comes to an end which I think is 2013. They seem to have lost interest in any sort of development at NCL. It was my understanding that NCL was to get the Berlin service back this year with a Berlin based unit but plans were scrapped just before the announcement was due.
The story seems very similar to the Wizz air scenario, when DTV - Warsaw route was pulled I understand the service was to swap to NCL but again plans were scrapped at the last moment, could this be an indication that NCL management are not responding to the screw tightening on costs required by the budget airlines?
This therefore leaves us with Jet2 for an increase in scheduled ops from NCL again many of the new routes announced of late particularly the city ones are using smaller 737 aircraft, as Jet 2 replace their fleet with the larger 800 series variants then I fear these routes will also be short lived. My advice if you fancy as city break to Rome or Venice book sooner rather than later as the routes may not be around in 2013 or 2014.
I did have high hopes when FLYBE opened their base as I think they have the ideal sized aircraft for new profitable routes from NCL. It is my understanding that FLYBE still have expansion plans for new routes from NCL and plans are on hold rather then filed in the bin. We will have to wait and see though