I was very surprised that the original BRS service closed. It provided better acces to the South West than having to use EXE/MAN/IOM or, back in the day, PLH. It was a niche certainly but had a very wide catchment and I always thought that the route had more pax in it than it was carrying. Perhaps the cost of finding that niche was just too great but routes take time to build - as anyone in the airline world knows.