highwide - am wondering whether the royal wedding inspired bank holiday at the end of April 2011 might have anything to do with pax numbers on the Amsterdam route.
Admittedly, if the NCL-AMS route is up 8% in April 2012, while MME-AMS is down 4% this is a bad sign, but I'm guessing that there's more leisure money floating around in Newcastle than Teesside and thus leisure flights will boost pax number more around national holidays. Furthermore, Easter 2011 was April 8th (i.e. early and colder) while Easter 2012 was April 24th (i.e. late and warmer) - meaning people were more likely to use it to go away.
Clutching at straws I know, but this is the most positive spin I can put on this.